Uganda: parliament debates controversial anti-homosexuality law

Uganda’s parliament is due to vote on Tuesday on a repressive law providing for up to 10 years in prison for those who maintain same-sex relationships, denounced by human rights defenders.

The text targets anyone engaging in homosexual activity or claiming to be LGBTQ+, in a country where homosexuality is already illegal.

“The anti-homosexuality bill is ready and will be tabled in parliament for a vote this afternoon,” Robina Rwakoojo, president of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, which studied the bill, told AFP on Tuesday. of law.

“We have heard from supporters of the bill and those who oppose it and have made our recommendations for consideration by the plenary,” she continued.

This vote on this bill comes at a time when conspiracy theories on the subject abound on social networks, accusing obscure international forces of promoting homosexuality in Uganda.

A few days before the bill was examined by parliamentarians, President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the African country in the Great Lakes region with an iron fist since 1986, had called homosexuals “deviants”.

On March 17, the Ugandan police announced the arrest of six men for “homosexual practice”.

Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, a parliamentarian belonging just like the head of state to the National Resistance Movement, declared for his part that he opposed the text, telling AFP that he wanted to “promote a just society”.

This bill “contains unconstitutional provisions, cancels the achievements recorded in the fight against gender-based violence”, he declared Tuesday in parliament, while several of his colleagues tried to cover his intervention.

Adrian Jjuuko, a lawyer and human rights activist, said he hopes parliament “does not pass this law because it would aggravate hate speech against minorities”.

– Outcry –

Uganda has strict anti-homosexuality legislation – a legacy of colonial laws – but since independence from the UK in 1962 there have been no prosecutions for consensual homosexual acts.

In 2014, a Ugandan court blocked a bill, approved by MPs and signed by President Museveni, to punish same-sex relations with life in prison.

This text had caused an outcry beyond Ugandan borders, some rich countries having suspended their aid after its presentation to Parliament.

The head of state “has historically taken into account the damage caused by bills, particularly in terms of relations with the West and donor funding”, said Kristof Titeca, an expert on African affairs. ‘Is at the University of Antwerp (Belgium).

This vote in Uganda also comes in a context of virulent wave of homophobia in East Africa, where homosexuality is illegal and often considered a crime.

Frank Mugisha, director of Uganda’s main gay rights organization suspended last year by authorities, Sexual Minorities Uganda, told AFP in March that he had been inundated with calls from LGBTQ+ people about the new project. of law because they “live in fear”.

Source: Burkina Information Agency