KAMPALA, May 29 (Reuters) – Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed one of the world’s toughest anti-LGBTQ laws, including the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, drawing Western condemnation and risking of sanctions from aid donors.
Same-sex relationships are already illegal in Uganda, as in more than 30 African countries, but the new law continues.
It stipulates the death penalty for “serial offenders” against the law and transmission of a terminal disease such as HIV/AIDS through gay sex. It also mandated a 20-year sentence for “promoting” homosexuality.
“The Ugandan president is now legalizing state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia,” said Clare Byarugaba, a rights activist in Uganda.
US President Joe Biden called the move “a terrible violation” of human rights and said Washington would review the law’s implications “on all aspects of US engagement in Uganda.”
“We are considering additional measures, including the use of sanctions and bans on entering the United States against anyone involved in serious human rights abuses or corruption,” he said.
A photo of Museveni’s presidency shows him signing the law with a gold pen on his desk. The 78-year-old called homosexuality a “deviation from normality” and urged lawmakers to resist “imperialist” pressure.
A local organization, Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, and 10 other individuals later filed a complaint against the law in the constitutional court, one of the petitioners, Busingye Kabumba, told Reuters.
Museveni sent the original bill passed in March back, asking parliament to drop some provisions. But his eventual approval was not seen as dubious in a conservative country where anti-LGBTQ attitudes have hardened in recent years, in part due to campaigning by Western evangelical church groups.
Uganda receives billions of dollars in foreign aid every year and may now face hostile measures from donors and investors, as happened with a similar bill nine years ago.
REPRESENTATIONS?
The sponsor of the bill, Asuman Basalirwa, told reporters that parliament speaker Anita Among’s US visa was canceled after the law was signed. We and the US embassy in Uganda did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a joint statement, the US’s flagship HIV/AIDS program PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said the law puts in the fight against HIV in Uganda “in serious. danger”.
Dominic Arnall, chief executive of Open For Business, a coalition of companies including Google ( GOOGL.O ) and Microsoft ( MSFT.O ), said the group was deeply disappointed and the law was against the interests of economy of Ugandans.
The UN human rights body declared it “shocked”.
Uganda’s move could inspire lawmakers in neighboring Kenya and Tanzania who are seeking similar measures.
“How good is our African leader!” tweeted George Kaluma, a Kenyan member of parliament who submitted an anti-LGBTQ bill in April.
“Kenya follows you in this effort to save humanity.”
The inclusion of the death penalty for offenses such as HIV transmission has caused particular outrage around the world.
Uganda’s existing law calls for a maximum 10-year sentence for the intentional transmission of HIV and does not apply if the infected person knows their partner’s HIV status.
In contrast, the new law does not differentiate between intentional and unintentional transmission and makes no exceptions based on knowledge of HIV status.
The amended version of the bill, adopted earlier this month after Museveni returned it to parliament, stipulates that simply identifying as LGBTQ is not a crime and changes a measure that obliges people to report of homosexual activity that only needs to be reported if a child is involved.
‘LIKE APARHEID’
LGBTQ Ugandans have called the changes pointless, saying law enforcement often exceeds its legal authority to harass them. They said the passage of the bill in March unleashed a wave of arrests, evictions and attacks on mobs.
The issue has been running for a long time in Uganda.
A less restrictive 2014 anti-LGBTQ law was struck down by a Ugandan court on procedural grounds, after Western governments first suspended some aid, imposed visa restrictions and security cooperation is restricted.
In 2009, a bill called “kill the gays” for the first time proposed the execution of homosexuals was introduced after a conference in Kampala that drew representatives from the United States including prominent anti-gay evangelical Scott Lively.
As well as the religious campaign, anti-LGBTQ attitudes in Africa also have roots in the colonial era, including an anti-sodomy section in Britain’s penal code. By the time the UK legalized same-sex practices in 1967, many former colonies were independent and had not inherited the legal change.
“To reduce any type of person, regardless of their sexuality, to a death sentence based on who they identify with and how they choose to live their lives is something we all need to very ashamed as a continent,” said South African filmmaker Lerato.
“We can compare it to apartheid if not worse.”
Reporting by Reuters correspondents in East Africa; Additional reporting by Rachel Savage and Bhargav Acharya in Johannesburg, Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Aaron Ross, Andrew Cawthorne and Giles Elgood
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
