Patience Atuhaire - BBC News, Kampala
Thu, March 9, 2023
Uganda's small LGBTQ+ community has repeatedly complained of discrimination
Uganda's parliament is set to consider a draft law that criminalises anyone identifying as LGBTQ+, and threatens them with 10 years in jail.
The bill also threatens landlords who rent premises to gay people with a prison sentence.
Speaker Annet Anita Among used homophobic language as she addressed lawmakers after the bill was tabled.
It is the latest sign of rising homophobia in a country where homosexual acts are already illegal.
Campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it believed that if the law was passed, Uganda would be the only African country to criminalise those who simply identify as LGBTQ+.
The proposed law would also ban the funding or promotion of LGBTQ+ activities.
It also prescribes a 10-year jail term for anyone who engages in a same sex relationship or marriage. Consent will not be a defence.
Anyone convicted of gay sex with a minor would also be jailed for 10 years.
The bill was tabled by opposition MP Asuman Basalirwa, and it is unclear whether President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) - which has a majority in parliament - will back the bill.
However, Mr Museveni has been speaking out against homosexuality recently, and the speaker is a member of the NRM.
She used a derogatory word to describe gay people, while saying they would be allowed to express their views in "public hearings" on the proposed legislation.
Politicians and others behind the bill have accused gay rights groups of recruiting and grooming children, and luring some with money or scholarships. But they have not presented any evidence to back up the claims.
LGBTQ+ activist Frank Mugisha, who lives in Uganda, said people were being "indoctrinated" into believing that gay rights were a threat to African values, and was "some big monster" that was "coming from the West".
"We've registered so many cases of violations [against the LGBTQ+ community]. We've seen so many cases of arrest, blackmail and extortion so this is going to increase," the activist said.
In 2014, Uganda's constitutional court nullified the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which had toughened laws against the LGBTQ+ community.
It included making it illegal to promote and fund LGBTQ+ groups and activities, as well as reiterating that homosexual acts should be punished by life imprisonment.
The court ruled that the legislation be revoked because it had been passed by parliament without the required quorum. The law had been widely condemned by Western countries.
The punishment of life imprisonment for same-sex relations already exists in the country's penal code. It is not clear if the proposed new legislation would override this.
Same-sex relations are banned in about 30 African countries, where many people uphold conservative religious and social values.
Uganda considers bill to criminalise identifying as LGBTQ
2022 San Francisco Pride parade
Thu, March 9, 2023 at 7:09 AM MST·2 min read
KAMPALA (Reuters) -Uganda's parliament on Thursday took up a bill that would criminalise identifying as LGBTQ, with lawmakers saying the current ban on same-sex relations does not go far enough.
Anti-LGBTQ sentiment is deeply entrenched in the highly conservative and religious East African nation, with same-sex relations punishable by up to life in prison.
More than 30 African countries ban same-sex relations, but Uganda's law, if passed, would appear to be the first to criminalise merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), according to Human Rights Watch.
The proposed Ugandan law was introduced as a private lawmaker's bill and aims to allow the country to fight "threats to the traditional, heterosexual family", according to a copy seen by Reuters.
It punishes with up to 10 years in prison any person who "holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female".
It also criminalises the "promotion" of homosexuality and "abetting" and "conspiring" to engage in same-sex relations.
The law is similar in some ways to a law passed in 2013 that stiffened some penalties and criminalised lesbianism. It drew widespread international condemnation before it was struck down by a domestic court on procedural grounds.
"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,” said Oryem Nyeko, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch.
After the new bill was read in parliament, Speaker Anita Among sent it to a committee for scrutiny and public hearings before it is brought back to the House for debate and a vote.
Among urged members of parliament to reject intimidation, referencing reported threats by some Western countries to impose travel bans against those involved in passing the law.
"This business of intimidating that 'you will not go to America', what is America?" she said.
An investigation by a parliamentary committee ordered in January into reports of alleged promotion of homosexuality in schools has already sparked a wave of discrimination and violence against members of the LGBTQ community, activists say.
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by George Obulutsa, Hereward Holland and Shounak Dasgupta)
No comments:
Post a Comment