This archive report was first published on 11 October 2019.
On Thursday, Uganda announced plans to revive a bill that would impose the death penalty on homosexuals, citing a rise in unnatural sex in the East African nation.
The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality. The government now plans to resurrect it within weeks.
“Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on October 11, 2019.
According to Lokodo, the current penal law is limited, only criminalising the act of gay sex. The government wants to make it clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised, with those who commit grave acts facing the death sentence.
Earlier this year, Brunei sparked international outcry over plans to impose the death penalty for gay sex, backtracking only after intense criticism.
Now Uganda wants to follow suit, with Lokodo optimistic that the bill will pass with the necessary two-thirds of members present in parliament. The government has lobbied legislators ahead of its re-introduction, Lokodo added.
Uganda’s constitutional court overturned the law - formerly known as the “Kill the Gays” bill - on a technicality in 2014. Even without it, Uganda is one of the hardest countries in Africa to be a sexual minority, with gay sex punishable with up to life imprisonment under British colonial law.
Activists have warned that the new bill risks unleashing attacks on the LGBT+ community. “Bringing back anti-gay legislation would invariably lead to a spike in discrimination and atrocities,” said Zahra Mohamed of the Toronto-based charity Stephen Lewis Foundation.
