Uganda’s parliament has adopted a new bill that prescribes a ten-year prison sentence for people found guilty of acts of homosexuality.
The Anti-Homosexuality bill 2023 seeks to prohibit marriage between persons of the same sex, penalize homosexual behavior, prohibit the promotion of homosexuality, and provide compensation to victims of the act.
If the bill becomes law, it will be an offense to touch another person with the intention of committing an act of homosexuality, and consent of the victim of homosexuality shall not be accepted as a defense during prosecution.
A few weeks ago, a Ugandan legislator Asuman Basalirwa was granted leave of parliament to allow him ample time to prepare the bill that intends to replace the 2014 Anti -Homosexuality law. The Constitutional court quashed the 2014 law.
Mr. Asuman argues that the new bill will strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging international and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family, and protect Uganda’s culture, children, and youth who are made vulnerable to sexual abuse through homosexuality.
Even when acts of homosexuality are illegal in the country under the panel code Act, the legislator says that the existing laws have gaps in them such as a lack of penalties against what he calls procurement, promoting, and dissemination of related literature, and pornographic materials on homosexuality.
Human rights organizations have criticized the bill calling it a retrogressive one since it undermines fundamental human rights. A statement by Human rights watch called on the Ugandan government to protect instead of seeking to punish a vulnerable and minority group of people.
Activists claim that members of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and transgender(LGBT) community in Uganda have always been under the threat of being attacked by the public and that the police normally raid their homes on suspicion that they are recruiting children and youth which is false.
However, the police and local leaders say they have evidence that children and youth are vulnerable to foreign recruiters into LGBT activists who come into the country with too much money to entice the young people into LGBT activities.
Recently, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni said that the law in the offing was provoked by western countries who demand that homosexual activities be accepted and promoted in Uganda. Museveni says that Homosexuality is a deviation that cannot be treated as normal.
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