Politico reports:
Uganda’s president has signed into law tough new anti-gay legislation supported by many in this East African country but widely condemned by rights activists and others abroad.
The version of the bill signed by President Yoweri Museveni doesn’t criminalize those who identify as LGBTQ, a key concern for campaigners who condemned an earlier draft of the legislation as an egregious attack on human rights.
[...]
Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law criminalizing sexual activity “against the order of nature.” The punishment for that offense is life imprisonment.The new law goes further. It
prescribes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” which is defined as cases of sexual relations involving people infected with HIV as well as with minors and other categories of vulnerable people. A suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be imprisoned for up to 14 years, according to the legislation.
Apart from the death penalty which has largely been abandoned in the civilised world, the Act takes no account of the fact that HIV in sub-Saharan Africa has been very much a heterosexual disease.
Prospects for improved trade with Uganda are now remote, after promising beginnings.
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