Tag: Uganda

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni

Calling the law a “Christmas gift” for the country, Ugandan legislators are set to pass a new version of the country’s recently struck down anti-gay law:

Drafters of a revised anti-gay law want parliament to pass it in time to be a “Christmas gift” for Ugandans, a lawmaker said on Friday, after a controversial earlier version was quashed because of legal technicalities.

Legislation passed by parliament almost a year ago, which would have punished gay sex with long prison terms, provoked a storm of international protest and led some donor countries to withhold aid. A constitutional court overturned the law in August.

Abdu Latif Ssebagala, a member of a parliamentary committee formed in September to draft a new version, said it had finished the bill and was ready to present it to parliament for debate.

In August, President Yoweri Museveni said he wanted the law amended to remove penalties for consenting adults. Ssebagala said however the new version still punished gay sex among consenting adults.

In October the president wrote in a newspaper that re-introducing the law risked triggering a trade boycott by the West.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni

Although his country’s anti-gay law was struck down earlier this year on a technicality, President Yoweri Museveni is concerned that Uganda might suffer a trade boycott should the laws be reintroduced.

Via Reuters:

In a commentary on Friday in the state-run New Vision daily, Museveni said he was not worried by the aid cuts that followed the initial law, but warned of a trade boycott by companies in the West.

He said re-issuing the anti-gay law would likely antagonize consumers in the West, risking access to a rich export market. “To carelessly and needlessly open unnecessary wars with useful customers is irresponsible to say the least,” he wrote.

Homosexuality remains taboo in Uganda and many socially conservative African societies where some religious groups have branded it a corrupting Western import.

The original passage of the anti-gay law was celebrated with a rally in the city center against homosexuals, which Museveni attended and where he was thanked for signing the bill by religious leaders from various denominations.

Donors, who finance about 20 percent of Uganda’s annual budget, lauded its annulment, and some have resumed lending.

The U.S. described the court’s decision as “an important step in the right direction for human rights” in Uganda.

The overturn of the anti-gay law came just days before a visit by the Ugandan President to the US for a summit with other African leaders. Rumors abound that it was Museveni himself who worked behind the scenes to bring down the law to avoid an unpleasant reception here.

(h/t JMG)

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is asking lawmakers to slow down as they work to re-legislate a controversial anti-gay law that was invalidated earlier this month.

From the Washington Post:

Museveni, who held a meeting Monday with lawmakers from his party, urged parliamentarians “not to cause chaos” by quickly reintroducing the bill, according to Medard Bitekyerezo, a lawmaker who strongly supports the anti-gay measure.

He said Museveni formed a committee, to be chaired by Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, to look into the concerns of rights activists who challenged the constitutionality of the law.

The government-controlled New Vision newspaper reported Tuesday that Museveni warned lawmakers that the bill could hurt the country’s economic development. Museveni asked the parliamentarians to debate the law “without any emotional feelings,” the paper reported.

More than 200 members of the Ugandan Parliament have lined up to reinstate the bill.

Uganda’s Constitutional Court has annulled the recent anti-gay legislation signed into law in February over what amounts to a technicality:

It (the Constitutional Court) ruled that the bill was passed by MPs in December without the requisite quorum and was therefore illegal.

Homosexual acts were already illegal, but the new law allowed for life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” and banned the “promotion of homosexuality”.

Earlier drafts of the anti-homosexuality act made it a crime not to report gay people – which would have made it impossible to live as openly gay – but this clause was removed.

The law, which was signed by President Yoweri Museveni in February, toughened up existing laws.

Lesbians were covered for the first time and those found living in a same-sex marriage could have been sentenced to life imprisonment.