ON FEBRUARY 6th David Cecil, a British theatre director working in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, was bundled into a car, taken first to the immigration department, then to a police station and locked up in a crowded cell. He was kept there for five days, then driven to Entebbe airport and deported. His crime was to have staged a comedy, “The River and the Mountain”, that touched on the subject of homosexuality. He leaves behind a Ugandan girlfriend and two children.

Homosexuality is a charged topic in Uganda, where it is illegal, as it is in 37 other African countries. In a survey published in 2010 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a Washington think-tank, around 80% of Ugandans said that homosexuality was morally wrong, an opinion that can translate into violence. David Kato, an openly gay Ugandan teacher and gay-rights activist, was murdered in 2011.

Uganda is not the only African country where gays are persecuted. In Cameroon, where homosexuality is also illegal, two human-rights lawyers, Alice Nkom and Michel Togue, who defend people accused of homosexuality, have received death threats. But Uganda has come under particular scrutiny since a law was proposed in 2009 that recommended the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, defined, among other things, as having homosexual sex with a minor, or having gay sex repeatedly or while HIV-positive. The proposed law also required witnesses to report any such goings-on to the police. A bill to that effect has lingered in parliament since then. It is up for debate again.

This may be part of a broader strategy by President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement to divert attention from other issues. It has happened before. In December, just as questions were being raised about corruption in the country’s oil industry, the bill resurfaced. Following big anti-government demonstrations in 2011, during which protesters were killed, stirring up another bout of homophobia was a useful distraction.