On April 21, 2023, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law. Parliament had voted on the act before it reached Museveni’s desk, only two members voted against it.
The repercussions include horror expressed by human rights activists, the World Bank freezing funding to Uganda, outcries from politicians around the world condemning the law and Uganda being established as one of the most dangerous places to be if you are LGBTQ, or even simply support their rights.
The law is the first of its kind, to criminalize merely identifying as LGBTQ. The Act has encouraged a witch hunt for LGBTQ individuals in Uganda, where citizens are criminally liable for not reporting people they know to be gay. Persons who aren’t heterosexual in Uganda face beatings from police and possibly death.
Activists estimate that there are about 500,000 LGBTQ individuals in the country. Now, they live in fear. Newspapers in Uganda frequently gather names of suspected LGBTQ individuals and publish them, increasing the chance that these individuals will experience violence simply for being themselves.
According to the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project, 96% of Ugandan residents believe homosexuality is something Ugandans should not accept as a society. Museveni even commended parliament for passing the bill, saying Uganda is standing firm from pressure from imperialists. This is ironic, because a large part of the bill’s creation was fueled by Western Christian fundamentalists. Churches from the West spent an estimated 26 million in East Africa to promote the law.
Museveni’s words, that Uganda is standing up to imperialism is completely false, as homophobia is a legacy of western colonialism. Uganda’s first anti-gay laws in 1950 were inherited from an anti-sodomy section of Britain’s penal code. Codified in the 1950 Ugandan Penal Code, the first anti-gay legislation imposed serious punishments for same-sex acts, categorizing them as “against the order of nature”.
The law is unconstitutional, it attacks Ugandans right to privacy, right to life, right to health and freedom from discrimination. The law also is at odds with international human rights treaties to which Uganda is a party.
Why do the leaders in Uganda feel that this is a victory?
A member of parliament, Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, one of the two Ugandan parliament members that voted against the bill stated: “Our people, including legislators, do not know the difference between homosexuality and non-consensual sex. And they mix it up with paedophilia.”
There are irrational fears in Uganda that homosexuality is a mental illness, that it is primarily older persons forcing children to bed with them, that it could cause a population downfall, that it comes from Western culture. There is a movement to “protect children” from homosexuality, as if it is a disease that can be spread and caught.
Uganda has just codified discrimination. The passage of the bill has led to a wave of arrests, evictions and mob attacks. LGBTQ activist groups in Ugandan have been forced to shut down. If you are gay in Uganda, where is it safe to be?
Uganda has failed its people by passing this law. Law makers in Uganda are boasting about the successful passage of this bill while innocent persons are being rounded up and beaten by police. They claim they are standing up to the West, that they are protecting Ugandan values. But that is not so. Some liken the effects of the bill to the South African apartheid, when individuals experienced discrimination just because of the color of their skin. Now, in 2023, individuals experience discrimination just because of their sexual preference.
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