Can LGBTQ Ugandans hope for relief from the new leader of Parliament?
Human rights advocate predicts Jacob Oboth-Oboth will be worse than his predecessor
Human rights advocates fear that Jacob Marksons Oboth, the new Speaker of the Uganda Parliament, will be worse than Anita Among, his homophobic predecessor.
Oboth, widely known as Jacob Oboth-Oboth, was elected Speaker on May 25.
Human rights defenders have appealed to Oboth to work to roll back Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) which calls for a life sentence for consensual same-sex intimacy and the death penalty for some homosexuality-related offenses.
But Oboth reportedly played a key role in drafting, defending, and steering Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) through Parliament back in 2023. That law provides the death penalty for some homosexuality-related offenses.
At the time, Oboth said that that law was necessary to protect Uganda’s cultural heritage and replace what he described as the obsolete colonial-era penal code.
More recently, as the Chairperson of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, he supported the recently dropped Sexual Offences Bill, which initially classified same-sex acts as “unnatural offences” punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He also pushed for ‘convicted homosexuals’ to be placed on a publicly accessible sex offenders registry hosted by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA).
Alberto (pseudonym), a leading human rights advocate who only agreed to speak anonymously because speaking openly in Uganda is currently dangerous, warned the LGBTQI+ community and rights activists in Uganda to brace themselves for trouble, because Parliament’s new leader is more toxic likely will be more efficient than his predecessor. Alberto was one of the human rights defenders who successfully petitioned against the AHA 2013 and is currently one of appellants against the AHA 2023.
He told Erasing 76 Crimes that, unlike former speaker Among, a loud homophobe who enjoyed the publicity surrounding the AHA, Oboth is highly educated, highly intelligent and more organized in his anti-rights strategy.
When Among was ousted from the post of Speaker, some human rights activists thought it was a win for the rights movement. Alberto says advocates are being deceived by the new speaker’s non-combative personality.
Ogunda Ogu, a voter who attended some of Oboth’s rallies during his campaign for member of parliament, says he made homophobic statements that escaped widespread notice because Oboth communicated them in the local language (Jopadhola). Oboth is the member of Parliament for West Budama County South in the Eastern District of Tororo.
In an open letter to the 12th parliament published by the Independent magazine, Frank Mugisha, the executive director of the LGBTQI+ rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, urged lawmakers under the leadership of Oboth to repeal the AHA and give the Ugandan LGBTQI+ community the freedom that is promised to every citizen by the Constitution.
Doing that, Mugisha said, would show the international community that Uganda is a country governed by the rule of law and not by the fancies and whims of one individual or a clique of legislators pursuing a personal or populist agenda.
Alberto isn’t expecting such an outcome. His summary of the situation is grim:
If Among and the 11th parliament killed the LGBTQI+ people’s rights using the AHA, Oboth and the 12th parliament are here to bury them.
