Committee report suggested minimal changes to Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Last week, one of the claims made by supporters of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was that the death penalty had been removed. Some media picked up this claim and reported it without critical analysis. In fact, the bill never made it far enough to have any alterations, and, as noted here, the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee report did not, in fact, suggest the removal of the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality.
A paper designated as the final report of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee was leaked last Thursday, just ahead of Friday’s final session. I have good reasons to believe that the report did come from the committee although I cannot say for certain that the report would have been presented on the floor of the Parliament had the bill gotten that far. You can read the report, converted to a .pdf, by clicking here.
To help see what a revised bill would have looked like, I compared the original Anti-Homosexuality Bill with the report. This version makes the changes called for in the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee report (Click the link). In this version the sections crossed out were in the original bill and those underlined are the ones suggested by the committee.
Even after the changes, the penalty for private, consensual  same-sex intimacy would still be life in jail and the death penalty would remain since it is the penalty provided for aggravated defilement in Uganda. Clauses 4, 7, 8, 14, 16 & 17 were deleted but a new penalty for participating in the marriage of a same-sex couples. Presumably, this would discourage ministers from performing the ceremonies. Even if the bill had been amended in the manner suggested by the committee, the bill would have defined homosexual behavior in a way that criminalized the most modest forms of intimacy with either life in prison or death for HIV positive individuals.
Reporters should carefully review  this committee report before taking statements from bill supporters at face value.

4 thoughts on “Committee report suggested minimal changes to Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill”

  1. (For those who might assume that change to the wording of Clause 3 means no death sentence, it should be pointed out that, under Penal Code 129, the sentence for ‘aggravated defilement’ is death. It’s a ‘play on words’ designed to fool people.)

  2. (For those who might assume that change to the wording of Clause 3 means no death sentence, it should be pointed out that, under Penal Code 129, the sentence for ‘aggravated defilement’ is death. It’s a ‘play on words’ designed to fool people.)

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