MPs once again passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill after the president recommended some changes (Picture: Reuters)
Uganda’s parliament passed for a second time one of the world’s ‘harshest’ anti-LGBTQ+ bills after the president asked for it to be toned down.
The sweeping Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 brings punishments as severe as the death penalty and decades-long imprisonment for being LGBTQ+.
Same-sex relations are already illegal under British colonial-era laws.
The bill was first passed in March only to be sent back by President Yoweri Museveni last month.
While lawmakers added five amendments, the legislation remains vastly unchanged – just a single MP out of 372 voted against it.
Presiding over the House on Tuesday, Speaker Anita Among applauded MPs for remaining ‘steadfast’ in the face of the bill’s international opposition.
Uganda’s Speaker Anita Among thanked MPs for passing the law (Picture: Reuters)
‘No amount of intimidation will make us retract what we have done,’ she told MPs, adding: ‘The Western World will not come and rule Uganda.’
She has called on Kiryowa Kiwanuka, the Attorney General of Uganda, to expeditiously hand the bill to the president’s desk.
Museveni, who has long made his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights all too clear, has 30 days to either sign the law, veto it or return it to parliament.
MPs ignored Museveni’s request to amend the death penalty punishment for so-called ‘aggravated homosexuality’, a term used by the government for gay sex that includes children or someone living with HIV.
The law still sentences anyone engaging in gay sex to life behind bars and ‘attempted’ homosexuality is met with up to 14 years.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni had called for some parts of the law to be toned down (Picture: AFP)
Simply ‘promoting’ homosexuality will be punishable with up to two decades in jail – a penalty activists say makes LGBTQ+ advocacy a crime.
It’s unclear whether a provision opposed by the president that would make some LGBTQ+ Ugandans undergo ‘rehabilitation’ remains in the bill.
Some of the changes made include the nitty-gritty of the legislation requested by Museveni, who asked for the law to make clear that simply identifying as queer is not a crime but the ‘act’ is.
The Chairperson of the Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, which scrutinised the president’s reccomendations, agreed.
‘The committee recommends… to criminalise sexual acts committed by persons of the same sex rather than punishing a person based on their perceived sexuality or physical appearance,’ Robina Rwakoojo was quoted by parliament as saying.
MPs also tweaked a measure that forced people to report homosexual activity to the authorities, which now only applies if it includes children.
Failure to report alleged homosexuality ‘acts’ is subject to five years in jail or a fine of 10 million Ugandan shillings (£2,150).
The situation for LGBTQ+ people in Uganda is ‘dire’, one activist said (Picture: Getty Images)
Those who ‘knowingly allow(s) their premises to be used for acts of homosexuality’, such as landlords, now face seven years in jail.
One MP from the ruling National Resistance Movement party, Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, voted against the revised bill.
TheMuseveni’s former senior counsel had proposed to bin the bill, saying his changes weren’t enough to prevent it from being a constitutional headache.
For LGBTQ+ campaigners in Uganda, the bill’s topsy-turvy journey to becoming law has only added to the daily stress and fear the community feels.
Frank Mugisha, the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a queer group shut down by the government, told Metro.co.uk: ‘The bill is very harsh and puts every LGBTQ+ person at risk.’
Muganzi Ruth, of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Convening for Equality, said she’s not the least bit surprised the bill passed again.
LGBTQ+ campaigners are preparing to take their fight against the bill to the courts (Picture: Getty Images)
‘For us as LGBTQ Ugandans, we are already living in terror every day,’ she said, ‘and we are mentally ready to legally fight this.
‘What is difficult is accepting that a house full of morally bankrupt individuals who have abused power was congratulating itself on criminalising LGBTQ+ persons and equating us to a murderous cult.’
Flavia Mwangovya, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, added: ‘This contemptuous law blatantly violates the human rights of LGBTQ+ people in Uganda, including the right to privacy, freedom from discrimination and the right to equal protection under the law.’
Edward Mutebi, the founder LGBTQ+ group Let’s Walk Uganda, said politicians and religious chiefs are presenting LGBTQ+ rights as a Western threat to Uganda.
‘Homosexuality is not a Western influence – not at all. It’s African,’ he said. ‘What is not African are the laws brought in by the colonialists a long time ago.’
The bill will likely lead to a rise in the number of HIV transmission as well as homelessness among LGBTQ+ people, activists said (Picture: AFP)
‘Religious leaders are the backbone of this bill,’ Mutebi added, ‘they are the initiators, without their rhetoric, we wouldn’t have the bill right now.’
The situation for LGBTQ+ people in Uganda is already ‘dire’, Mutebi said, and the uncertainty of the bill becoming law has only added to this.
‘Signing or not signing, passing or not passing the bill, it’s all been so traumatising for so many people and left them very disturbed,’ he said.
‘People arrested. People blackmailed. People extorted. People are becoming homeless.’
Mutebi said that a knock-on effect of the bill will be a spike in HIV transmissions as LGBTQ+ people hold back on seeking medical care, as well as homelessness as landlords refuse to lease out homes to queer people.
‘But we don’t know what’s going to happen until the bill becomes law. We’re likely to see worse than what we’re seeing now, yet what we are seeing now is as worse than what I can describe. The situation is dire,’ he said.
‘Please, the world,’ Mutebi added, ‘continue standing with the LGBTQ+ people in Uganda.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
‘We are mentally ready to legally fight this.’