Tuesday, March 21, 2023

AMERICAN EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE
Uganda to vote on tough anti-gay bill
AFP
Tue, Mar 21, 2023


Uganda's parliament was due to vote Tuesday on anti-gay legislation which proposes tough new penalties for same-sex relations in a country where homosexuality is already illegal.

Under the proposed law, anyone in the conservative East African nation who engages in same-sex activity or who identifies publicly as LGBTQ could face up to 10 years in prison.

"The Anti-Homosexuality Bill is ready and will be tabled (put) before parliament for a vote this afternoon," said Robina Rwakoojo, chair of the legal and parliamentary affairs committee, which has been studying the legislation.

The legislation enjoys broad public support in Uganda and reaction from civil society has been muted following years of erosion of civic space under President Yoweri Museveni's increasingly authoritarian rule.

Nevertheless, Museveni has consistently signalled he does not view the issue as a priority and would prefer to maintain good relations with Western donors and investors.

Discussions about the bill in parliament have frequently been laced with homophobic rhetoric, with Museveni last week referring to gay people as "these deviants."

"Homosexuals are deviations from normal. Why? Is it by nature or nurture? We need to answer these questions," the 78-year-old told lawmakers.

"We need a medical opinion on that. We shall discuss it thoroughly," he added, in a manoeuvre interpreted by analysts and foreign diplomats as a delaying tactic.

"Museveni has historically taken into account the damage of the bill to Uganda's geopolitics, particularly in terms of relations with the West, and in terms of donor funding," said Kristof Titeca, an expert on East African affairs at the University of Antwerp.

"His suggestion to ask for a medical opinion can be understood in this context: a way to put off what is a deeply contentious political issue," Titeca told AFP.

On Saturday, Uganda's attorney general Kiryowa Kiwanuka told the parliamentary committee scrutinising the bill that existing colonial-era laws "adequately provided for an offence".

- 'Unconstitutional provisions' -

As parliamentary proceedings got under way, legislator Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, who belongs to Museveni's National Resistance Movement party, urged lawmakers not to pass the legislation.

The bill "contains provisions that are unconstitutional, reverses the gains registered in the fight against gender-based violence and criminalises individuals instead of conduct that contravenes legal provisions", he said, as some MPs repeatedly tried to shout over him.

"It was introduced during a time when anti-homosexual sentiments have been whipped up across the country and is not based on any evidence to show that incidents of homosexuality have increased and require additional legislative intervention," he added.

In recent months, conspiracy theories accusing shadowy international forces of promoting homosexuality have gained traction on social media in Uganda.

Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a leading gay rights organisation whose operations were suspended by the authorities last year, told AFP earlier this month he had already been inundated with calls from LGBTQ people over the new bill.

"Community members are living in fear," he said.

Last week, police said they had arrested six men for "practising homosexuality" in the southern lakeside town of Jinja.

Another six men were arrested on the same charge on Sunday, according to police.

Uganda is notorious for intolerance of homosexuality -- which is criminalised under colonial-era laws.

But since independence from Britain in 1962 there has never been a conviction for consensual same-sex activity.

In 2014, Ugandan lawmakers passed a bill that called for life in prison for people caught having gay sex.

The legislation sparked international condemnation, with some Western nations freezing or redirecting millions of dollars of government aid in response, before a court later struck down the law on a technicality.

gm-str/amu/txw/bp

Uganda's parliament set to vote on tougher anti-LGBTQ bill

Lawmakers are voting on the bill as President Yoweri Museveni calls for investigations into homosexuality in the country. Uganda already has some of the most draconian anti-LGBTQ legislation in the world.

Members of parliament in Uganda on Tuesday were set to vote on a bill that will criminalize identifying as LGBTQ, with some lawmakers in the conservative East African nation saying that the nationwide ban on same-sex relationships does not go far enough.

What did the bill entail?


The bill, introduced earlier this month, proposes tough new penalties against sexual minorities.

Under the new proposed legislation, anyone who engages in "same-sex activity" or who identifies as LGBTQ could face up to 10 years' imprisonment.

"The homosexuals are deviations from normal. Why? Is it by nature or nurture? We need to answer these questions," President Yoweri Museveni said when MPs asked him to comment on the bill.

The proposed law aims to allow Uganda to fight what it perceives as "threats to the traditional, heterosexual family."


Homophobia and anti-trans sentiment are deeply entrenched in the highly conservative and religious nation, with same-sex romantic relationships punishable by up to life imprisonment.

More than 30 African countries have similar statutes, but Uganda's law, if passed, would be the first to criminalize merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ), according to Human Rights Watch.

It also criminalizes what it calls the "promotion" of homosexuality and "abetting" and "conspiring" to engage in same-sex relations.

Lawmakers in Uganda have voted on anti-gay bill
Image: Sally Hayden/ZUMA/imago images

Strong condemnation from rights groups

The bill has drawn sharp criticism from human rights organizations.

The law is similar to one passed in 2013 that stiffened some already-existing penalties and criminalized lesbian relationships. It drew intense international outrage for originally proposing to punish homosexuality with the death penalty. This was later revised to life in prison.

However, it was quickly struck down by a domestic court on procedural grounds.

According to Oryem Nyeko a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Uganda, "One of the most extreme features of this new bill is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are, as well as further infringing on the rights to privacy, and freedoms of expression and association that are already compromised in Uganda."

DW

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