Four leading African HIV experts have authored a joint statement condemning moves to further criminalise homosexuality in Uganda, and have called on the Ugandan Government to cease criminalising same-sex behaviour.
Serge Paul Eholié from Côte d’Ivoire, Keletso Makofane from Harvard University, James G. Hakim from Zimbabwe and Kenneth Ngure from Kenya are International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council Africa regional representatives, and the four men issued a joint statement against the so-called “Kill the Gays” Bill earlier this month.
“Uganda is facing a serious threat to human rights and the HIV response with the announcement of plans to introduce legislation that will impose the death penalty on people found to have had sex with a member of their own sex or to have ‘promoted’ homosexuality,” the joint statement says.
“The bill is an expansion of a previous one that was passed five years ago and subsequently invalidated on a technicality. The latest bill would extend penalties to ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, broadening the scope to target human rights and health advocates for the LGBT community.
“The proposed legislation is contrary to Uganda’s National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan which aims to achieve ‘zero discrimination’ and to ‘institute and strengthen anti-stigma and discrimination programmes’, with particular attention to the needs of key populations, such as men who have sex with men. We know from experience how devastating stigma and discrimination can be for the most marginalised people. Around the time of the announcement of the legislation, Brian Wasswa, a member of the Ugandan LGBT community, was brutally attacked and murdered – he is one of four community members who have been attacked in the past three months.”
The four HIV experts said Uganda had already been provided with scientific advice that homosexuality was not something that was unnatural or that was in need of special policing.
“Top African scientists have definitively debunked that homosexuality is unnatural in Uganda and that people can be recruited to become LGBT,” the joint statement says. Read more via Star Observer