A new bill before the Ugandan parliament, which proposes a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and “serial offenders”, demonstrates that many nations still impose harsh penalties for public expressions of homosexuality. A sentence of life imprisonment will be imposed for touching a person with homosexual intent. Membership in gay organizations, advocacy of gay human rights and the provision of condoms or safer sex advice to gay people will result in seven years jail for “promoting” homosexuality. Failing to report violators to the police within 24 hours would incur three years behind bars. The new legislation will also apply to Ugandans who commit these "crimes" while living abroad, even in countries where such behavior is not a criminal offense.
Only a handful of nations (the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK) ensure full equality and protection under the law for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) persons. No international human-rights convention that provides for the sexual rights as human rights and equality of the LGBT community exists, a fact that prevents more progressive nations from bringing pressure to bear on the African and Islamic states where homophobia is enshrined as law.
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Update :
International human-rights groups and Western governments are condemning the Ugandan law that will allot severe punishments on gays. Under the law, anyone aware of a gay or lesbian individual who does not inform the police within 24 hours will face jail time. In addition, gays involved in a sexual act with an HIV/AIDS infect partner will face the death penalty.
According to the Global and Mail, the law has the potential to divide leaders at the summit this week, where the Commonwealth convenes on Friday in Trinidad and Tobago. ‘If it is raised at the summit, the issue has the potential to divide Commonwealth leaders, who hold deeply polarized views on homosexuality. A number of Commonwealth countries, including Canada and Britain, have liberal views on the subject, but many African and Caribbean nations are socially conservative and maintain laws on their books that criminalize homosexuality.’
Read more here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ugandas-anti-gay-bill-causes-commonwealth-uproar/article1376503/
Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push – Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about ‘curing’ homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived in Kampala, Uganda, where they gave a series of talks. The theme of the event was ‘the gay agenda – that whole hidden and dark agenda’ – and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family. The Americans say they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that effectively led to the bill.
That said, one month after the conference, a Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations. The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals.
Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?hp
The top United Nations human rights official today urged the Ugandan Government to do away with the draft bill that would prohibit homosexual relations and contains provisions for punishing people alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned that the bill would bring Uganda into a “direct collision” with established human rights standards aimed at preventing discrimination.
“It is extraordinary to find legislation like this being proposed more than 60 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – as well as many subsequent international laws and standards – made it clear this type of discrimination is unacceptable,” Ms. Pillay noted.
Read more here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33491&Cr=discrimination&Cr1=
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