The president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, gave the official go-ahead yesterday to the hunt for homosexuals. Although same-sex relationships were already illegal in the African country and the government had been harshly persecuting the LGBTIQ group for years, the 78-year-old leader signed one of the world’s toughest laws against l ‘homosexuality and which further aggravates the punishments for gay, lesbian and transsexual people. The new text even includes the death penalty for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality”.
Yesterday, the Ugandan Government published images of the Ugandan president, in power for 37 years, signing the law approved by Parliament in March with a black and gold pen. Museveni, who had previously described homosexuality as “a deviation from the normal”, did not exercise his right of veto despite the condemnation of several Western countries and organizations.
According to the new Anti-Homosexuality Law 2023, the maximum punishment will be carried out when the aggressor is the father or guardian of the victim, when the latter is under 14 years old or has a mental disability or if they have homosexual relations while being infected with the hiv
In practice, the legislative text leaves any door open to rounding up sexual minorities, as it also punishes those who “encourage or persuade” another person to have non-heterosexual relationships, those who attend gay weddings or landlords who rent out homes to homosexual couples.
In the new Ugandan legislative framework, it will be a crime to even talk about it and journalists who report on the collective or activists who “defend” the gay cause will be punished with sentences of between 10 and 20 years.
According to a report from Open Democracy this month, members of the ultra-conservative wing of the United States are behind the African country’s anti-LGBTI drift in recent years. The study indicates that the organizers or collaborators of the political mobilization that pushed the Ugandan law proposal have links to extreme lobbies such as Family Watch International.
At the same time, in recent years the discourse has spread on the African continent that Africanness is incompatible with homosexuality and that the supposed LGTBIQ agenda is a foreign imposition.
Despite the fear, reactions of outrage from Uganda took place shortly after the announcement of the passing of the law. Ugandan activist Rosebell Kagumire remarked from her Twitter account that the harshness of a rule so restrictive “it aims to make the community invisible, criminalize people and promote hatred”. “We have always resisted any law rooted in hatred, difference – he added – and resistance continues.”
For her part, activist Clare Byarugaba called yesterday’s date “a very dark and sad day for the LGTBIQ community, our allies and all of Uganda” and denounced that, with the approval of the law, the president of the African country “has legalized homophobia and transphobia financed by the Government”.
The wording of the rule approved yesterday by the president has already caused outrage in the West. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described the new rule as “one of the worst of its kind anywhere in the world”.
