Uganda once again called for a gay hunt this week. Despite the fact that homosexual relations were already illegal in the African country, the approval of a new law on Tuesday represents another step in the persecution that the LGBTI group has suffered for more than a decade. The new rule toughens the punishments and establishes the death penalty – as is currently the case in Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria in Africa – for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” for gay, lesbian and transsexual people.
According to the text, the maximum punishment will be carried out when the aggressor is the father or guardian of the victim, when he is under 14 years old or when he suffers from a mental disability. For the gay community, the law aims to wipe them off the map. 73% of the 500 Ugandan parliamentarians voted in favor of a law that also proposes life imprisonment for those guilty of perpetrating the “offence of homosexuality” and sentences of between 10 and 20 years for journalists who report on homosexuality, to activists who defend the gay cause or even to landlords who rent houses to homosexuals.
The project still needs to be ratified by the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, who could exercise the right of veto. It doesn’t seem likely that he will. The president, 78 years old and almost four decades in power, called gays “deviant” and criticized that the West wants to impose its vision on the issue.
The Minister of Public Works and Transport, Francis Ecweru, made the Government’s position clear this week during the debate in Parliament. “Homosexuality is a threat to the human species, and what we are discussing is the preservation of the human species.”
From the West, Uganda’s new step provoked cries of indignation. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called the new law “outrageous”, “devastating” and “one of the worst of its kind anywhere in the world”, and the Secretary of US State, Antony Blinken, pointed out that the rule “undermines the fundamental rights of all Ugandans and could reverse progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS”.
Human rights organizations also protested. Tigere Chagutah, representative of Amnesty International, described the rule as “deeply repressive” and warned that it “will institutionalize discrimination, hatred and prejudice against LGBTI people”, and Oryem Nyeko, HRW researcher in Uganda, he emphasized the pettiness of the law. “One of the most extreme characteristics is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are.”
Frank Mugisha, one of the few Ugandan activists who dares to speak out, denounced a law that “attempts to eliminate the entire existence of any Ugandan homosexual”, and activist Kasha Nabagesera denounced it as a witch hunt. “The owners cannot rent the houses to the collective, our parents are obliged to denounce their children for being homosexual…”.
