Uganda’s parliament on Tuesday passed a bill that will criminalize people who get identified as gay, or a sexual minority and proposes tough new penalties for same-sex relationships, reported Reuters.
An opposition lawmaker introduced the bill in the parliament last month. While presenting the bill he said that his goal behind coming up with the bill was to punish the promotion, recruitment, and funding of LGBTQ-related activities. The bill proposes imprisonment of up to 10 years for people who engage in same-sex activity or who identify as LGBTQ.
On Tuesday, the bill got passed with widespread support in Uganda’s parliament. Nearly all of the 389 legislators present in the parliament voted in favor of the bill.
According to the rights group Human Rights Watch, the new law appears to be the first to outlaw merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). The rights group claims that the bill, if signed into law, would violate multiple fundamental rights, including rights to freedom of expression and association, privacy, equality, and non-discrimination.
If the bill is signed into law then individuals could face lengthy prison terms on the basis of their sexual identity. Under the proposed bill, family, friends, and members of the community would have to report individuals in same-sex relationships to the concerned authorities.
Notably, Uganda and almost 29 other African countries already ban same-sex relations.
The bill will now be forwarded to Uganda’s President Museveni who can choose to use his veto or sign it into law. In a recent speech, Museveni suggested that he supports the bill, accusing Western nations of trying to impose their practices on other people.
Back in 2009, Uganda introduced an anti-homosexuality bill that imposed a death sentence for indulging in gay sex. The country’s lawmakers then passed another bill in 2014 in which they replaced the death penalty clause with a proposal for life in prison. The law was later struck down.
