This Monday, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, signed a law against the toughest LGBTQ community in the world, which contemplates the strongest penal measures against sex diversity, where the death penalty is a sentence against those who practice, which the Ugandan president called aggravated homosexuality.
The bill penalizes sexual education for the gay community, making it illegal in that country not to report to the police those who are called perpetrators of aggravated homosexuality. This law requires that what they called “rehabilitation treatments against homosexual offenders” be carried out, as part of the sentence given to people from the LGBTQ community in the African country.
Now, on this Tuesday, a group of eleven prominent activists, academics and journalists from Uganda, among others, rejected before the country’s Constitutional Court the recently approved law, which has been rejected by several international organizations, alleging that this text violates various rights that are provided for in the Ugandan Constitution.
The executive director of the NGO Forum for the Awareness and Promotion of Human Rights, Adrian Jjuko, affirmed that the country is failing in the obligation to roll back HIV/AIDS by passing a law that makes LGBT people hide. “It is something that will prevent them from accessing the health services they need,” he said in a statement.
According to the country’s new legislature, the death penalty will be contemplated against people who abuse a minor of the same sex, have sexual relations while being HIV-positive and incest. The new legislation in Uganda was also condemned by the Joint UN Program against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which expressed its deep concern about the consequences that the new legislation may have for HIV-positive people.
The new lawsuit against the regulations also points out that the law was approved without allowing the participation of enough citizens in its debates, depriving people of sexual diversity. Part of the complaints made by the activists are the penalty with up to twenty years in prison for the promotion of homosexuality, contravenes the right to freedom of expression, thought, conscience and belief, in addition to the right to issue and receive information.
Among the plaintiffs are the academics Sylvia Tamale and Busingye Kabumba, the well-known and influential journalist among Uganda’s high political circles Andrew Mwenda, and the activists Frank Mughisa, Kasha Jackeline Nabageseera and Solome Nakaweesi Kimbugwe, among others.
With information from EFE and CNN
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