Uganda enacts harsh anti-LGBTQ law which includes death penalty
KAMPALA — Uganda’s 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 sanctions from aid donors.
Same-sex relations were already illegal in Uganda, as in more than 30 African countries, but the new law goes further.
It stipulates capital punishment for “serial offenders” against the law and transmission of a terminal illness like HIV/AIDS through gay sex. It also decrees a 20-year sentence for “promoting” homosexuality. “The Ugandan president has today legalized state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia,” said Clare Byarugaba, a Ugandan rights activist.
United States President Joseph R. Biden called the move “a tragic violation” of human rights and said Washington would evaluate the implications of the law “on all aspects of US engagement with Uganda.”
“We are considering additional steps, including the application of sanctions and restriction of entry into the United States against anyone involved in serious human rights abuses or corruption,” he said.
A presidency photo of Mr. Museveni showed him signing the law with a golden pen at his desk. The 78-year-old has called homosexuality a “deviation from normal” 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 at the constitutional court, one of the petitioners, Busingye Kabumba, told Reuters.
Mr. Museveni had sent the original bill passed in March back, asking parliament to tone down some provisions. But his ultimate approval was not seen as in doubt 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 each year and could now face adverse measures from donors and investors, as happened with a similar bill nine years ago.
REPRISALS?
The bill’s sponsor, Asuman Basalirwa, told reporters that parliament speaker Anita Among’s US visa was canceled after the law was signed. Among and the US embassy in Uganda did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a joint statement, the US’s flagship HIV/AIDS programme PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS (UNAIDS) said the law put Uganda’s anti-HIV fight “in grave jeopardy”.
Dominic Arnall, chief executive of Open For Business, a coalition of companies that includes Google and Microsoft, said the group was deeply disappointed and the law ran counter to Ugandans’ economic interests.
The U.N. human rights body declared itself “appalled”.
Uganda’s move could encourage lawmakers in neighboring Kenya and Tanzania seeking similar measures.
“What a leader we’ve in Africa!” tweeted George Kaluma, a Kenyan member of parliament who submitted an anti-LGBTQ bill in April.
“Kenya is following you in this endeavour to save humanity.”
The inclusion of the death penalty for offences like transmitting HIV has drawn particular outrage internationally.
Existing Ugandan law calls for a maximum 10-year sentence for intentionally transmitting HIV and does not apply when the person who contracted the infection was aware of their sexual partner’s HIV status.
By contrast, the new law makes no distinction between intentional and unintentional transmission and contains no exception based on awareness of HIV status.
The amended version of the bill, adopted earlier this month after Mr. Museveni returned it to parliament, stipulated that merely identifying as LGBTQ is not a crime and revised a measure that obliged people to report homosexual activity to only require reporting when a child is involved. —