Global Day of Action will protest Uganda’s harsh anti-gay bill
Demonstrations planned for London, New York, Washington.
LGBTQ rights activists in Uganda are calling for an Emergency Global Day of Action tomorrow to protest the repressive Anti-Homosexuality Bill that President Yoweri Museveni has suggested he will sign after Parliament makes a few changes.
It is not yet clear how widespread the international protest will be.
Protests are planned at official Ugandan offices in London, New York City and Washington, D.C. The hashtag for the protests is #SayNoToAHB23.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted in March that the then-newly-passed bill “would undermine fundamental human rights of all Ugandans and could reverse gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
“The recently passed anti-LGBTQ+ bill in Uganda is horrific and threatens human rights and basic human dignity. This bill must be stopped,” tweeted the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights advocacy organization.
“President Museveni must urgently veto draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” declared Amnesty International.
The bill “flies in the face of a resolution on protecting LGBTI people agreed by the African Commission on human and people’s rights, while its callous recommendation of the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ makes it one of the most extreme anti-LGBTI laws in the world and further violates international standards on death penalty,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
According to the Ugandan Parliament’s official description of the bill:
- An individual convicted of committing the offense of homosexuality (presumably meaning same-sex sexual activity) would be sentenced to life in prison.
- A person convicted of attempting to commit that act would be sentenced to seven years in prison.
- A legal entity convicted of promotion of homosexuality would be fined 1 billion Ugandan shillings (about U.S. $266,000)
- A child convicted of homosexual activity would be imprisoned for three years.
- A person convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” would face the death penalty. That would apply to repeat offenses and cases of homosexual rape and homosexual activity involving a child, a person with disabilities or incest.
Meanwhile, LGBTQ Ugandans have fled across the border to Kenya, hoping to find a society that is slightly less homophobic than Uganda. There they add to the hundreds who fled to Kenya a decade ago during earlier anti-gay crackdowns in Uganda. Hundreds of LGBTQ refugees have been confined to the huge Kakuma Refugee Camp ever since.
