UGANDA’S President Yoweri Museveni backs a bill containing the toughest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, but sent it back to parliament on Thursday to make it even tougher, the ruling party leader said.
A group of parliamentarians from Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement discussed the law with the president and agreed in principle to sign it into law, Chief of Staff Denis Hamson Obua said in a post-conference press conference. ‘Before it is completed, we also agree that the bill will be returned to facilitate the enhancement and strengthening of several provisions in line with our best practices.’ Obua said Museveni will hold a meeting with parliament’s legal and parliamentary affairs committee on Tuesday to work out the changes.
Human rights activists and the US government say the law is one of the toughest laws in the world to punish sexual minorities. The United Nations, the European Union, and a long list of giant corporations condemn it.
The law imposes the death penalty for so-called aggravated homosexuality, including homosexual acts when HIV-positive, and 20 years’ imprisonment for ‘promoting’ homosexuality. The bill, passed almost unanimously in parliament last month, has already sparked a string of arrests, evictions and mob attacks against the LGBTQ community in Uganda, community members say.
Museveni is a staunch opponent of LGBTQ rights and last month called gays a ‘deviation from the norm.’ He signed into law in 2014 increasing penalties for homosexual relationships, but at times suggested that homosexuality should be addressed through therapy rather than law. He faced the possibility of juggling as he tried to please lawmakers with a law that gained widespread public support without angering the foreign donors who provide billions of dollars in aid each year. Western governments have suspended aid, imposed visa restrictions and limited security cooperation in response to legislation signed by Museveni in 2014.
The law was overruled by national courts within months for procedural reasons. Same-sex relationships are already illegal in Uganda, as they are in more than 30 African countries, but supporters of the new law say the threat homosexuality poses to traditional family values requires stricter laws. MPs in neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania recently called for similar measures in their own countries.
The International Business Alliance, which includes Google, criticised the law last month, warning it would put companies operating in Uganda in an impossible position and hurt the country’s economy.
