Uganda to tighten law against homosexuality

The Ugandan government has announced a major offensive against gays and lesbians in the African country, saying it will prosecute anyone who comes out.

Sex between two people of the same sex already is a criminal offense in Uganda - punishable by life imprisonment - but Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo told a weekend news conference he does not know of a single conviction. Buturo said the government is concerned about what he called the “mushrooming” number of gays and lesbians in the country.

Under the legislation being planned it would be illegal just to be gay.

“We want it to become law in that if someone is a homosexual or confesses to being a gay or lesbian, then he is a criminal,” Buturo said.

Last year Uganda’s leading Muslim cleric called for gays to be rounded up and marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.

Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje told reporters of his plan following last October after a much publicized meeting with President Yoweri Museveni. “I asked President Museveni to get us an island on Lake Victoria and we take these homosexuals and they die out there,” Mubajje said. “If they die there then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country.”
Others at the meeting reportedly said that the president did not respond to the suggestion.
Mubajje’s remarks followed similar threats by other Islamic leaders.

Earlier last year, Muslim Tabliqh youth announced a plan to form an ‘Anti-Gay Squad’ to fight homosexuality in Uganda.

On 28 August 2007, Sheikh Multah Bukenya, a senior cleric in the Tabliqh Organization, was quoted during prayers at Noor Mosque in Kampala as saying that his followers are “ready to act swiftly and form this squad that will wipe out all abnormal practices like homosexuality in our society.”

Anti-gay attacks are commonplace in Uganda but have increased since August when Ugandan LGBT rights groups for the first time held a public news conference to demand basic civil rights. Many of the participants wore disguises out of fears of government reprisals. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission last year said that it had uncovered evidence that the Bush administration has funded groups in Uganda that actively promote violence and discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

Among those receiving money, according to US government records, is Uganda Muslim Tabliqh, and the Makerere University Community Church,

The church’s leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa, was a leading organizer of the anti-gay rally in Kampala.

Ssempa and his coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, also have threatened the safety of Ugandan LGBT rights activists by posting their names, photos and addresses on a Web site.