Tough new anti-gay law raises outcry
Western powers slam move, with US threatening to cut aid and investment
President Yoweri Museveni has signed into law draconian new measures against homosexuality described as among the world’s harshest, prompting condemnation from human rights and LGBTQ groups as well as Western powers.
US President Joe Biden called for the immediate repeal of the measures he slammed as “a tragic violation of universal human rights”, and threatened to cut aid and investment in the east African country.
Museveni’s office said the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 was among six pieces of legislation the president signed into law on Sunday.
Lawmakers passed a new draft of the legislation earlier this month, vowing to resist what they said was outside interference in their efforts to protect Uganda’s values from Western immorality.
The amended version said identifying as gay would not be criminalised but “engaging in acts of homosexuality” would be an offence punishable with life imprisonment.
Although Museveni had advised lawmakers to delete a provision making “aggravated homosexuality” a capital offence, lawmakers rejected that move, meaning repeat offenders could be sentenced to death, although Uganda has not carried out capital punishment for several years.
A rights group announced on Monday that it had filed a legal challenge with Uganda’s High Court, arguing that the legislation was “blatantly unconstitutional”.
“By criminalising what we call consensual same-sex activity among adults, it goes against key provisions of the constitution including rights on equality and non-discrimination,” said Adrian Jjuuko, executive director of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum.
Biden said he had asked his National Security Council to assess what the law meant for “all aspects of US engagement with Uganda”, including services providing Aids relief and other aid and investments.
He said the administration would also consider sanctions against Uganda and the restriction of entry into the United States of people engaging in human rights abuses or corruption there.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the Ugandan government had “an obligation to protect all of its citizens and uphold their basic rights”.
“Failure to do so will undermine relationships with international partners,” he warned in a statement.
Britain, the former colonial power in Uganda which criminalised homosexuality during its rule, said it was “appalled” and called the law “deeply discriminatory”.
“It will increase the risk of violence, discrimination and persecution, and will set back the fight against HIV/Aids,” Britain’s Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell said.
The UN Human Rights Office, whose commissioner Volker Turk in March described the bill as “among the worst of its kind in the world”, also condemned its passage into law.
Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, Africa deputy director for Human Rights Watch, said it was “discriminatory and is a step in the wrong direction for the protection of human rights for all people in Uganda”.
Amnesty International also said the signing of this “deeply repressive law is a grave assault on human rights”.
But the legislation has broad public support in Uganda, a majority Christian country that has pursued some of the toughest anti-gay legislation in Africa, where around 30 nations ban homosexuality.