Ugandan civil society groups marked international Human Rights Day on Thursday by calling for the withdrawal of what they call the “discriminative and oppressive” Anti-Homosexuality Bill from the country’s Parliament.
The Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which represents nearly 20 Ugandan advocacy groups, says the bill is “an unprecedented threat” to the fundamental human rights of Ugandans.
“Uganda today stands at a crossroads,” the coalition adds. “We can either turn further towards an agenda of divisionism and discrimination, and pay the costs in terms of internal suppression of our own citizens coupled with international isolation and marginalization, or we can embrace diversity, human rights and constitutionalism.”
The bill, proposed by David Bahati, the member of Parliament for the Ndorwa West constituency, provides for life imprisonment for any Ugandan who, whether inside or outside the country, engages in what the bill calls “same gender sexual activity.” It also prescribes life sentences for partners in same-sex marriages.
If an offender is a person living with HIV, a person with authority over a sexual partner, or if the partner is under 18, the bill provides for the death penalty. An “attempt to commit homosexuality” or “aiding and abetting” the crime can be punished with seven years’ imprisonment, and “promotion of homosexuality” can result in a jail sentence of five to seven years.
The Civil Society Coalition says in its statement that the bill, “while claiming to protect the African traditional family… fails to recognise the rich diversity of those family structures in our multiple traditions. By mounting an attack on the most fundamental principle of the human rights framework… it is also mounting an attack on some of the most cherished dimensions of African culture.”
Read the coalition’s Human Rights Day statement

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Ugandans & Africans, stand strong; and recognize that name's like 'civil society', 'human rights organization', etc, etc are eurocentric-created and eurocentric-funded TOOLS for African domination & for world domination!
Africans have been the longest on the planet. Africans have been on the planet for thousands of generations.
This historical fact means that if homosexuality was normal and normal, then homosexuality would have evolved as a representative behavior in representative samples of indigenous African societies.
Yet we see in thousands of indigenous African societies that homosexuality HAS NEVER been a representative African behavior that is condoned or promoted as social policy.
The truth is: Homosexuality is a birth/behavioral defect. Every other group on the planet except the deviant Euros HAVE ALWAYS known this fact. Homosexuality has no redeeming individual or social value.
In fact, homosexual behavior is added threat to the health of the individual and to the children & society as a whole.
This means that homosexuals should be Cured, or Closeted, or Confined, or Castrated when they sodomize and traumatize children, and promote the deviant behavior to undermine the health of the society.
Killing someone for merely having the homosexual birth defect would be unwise.
Incarceration, and CASTRATION of the promoters of the social deviance, would be adequate enough; because tamping down the libido of homosexuals could effect a cure.
And we ALWAYS want to first try to cure those who have birth/behavioral defect.
Homosexual deviance is far and away more prevalent in Western/christian societies; because Christian Institutions of Child Sodomy have been sodomizing and traumatizing the children, and then 'turning them loose' to 'infect' the rest of Western/christian societies.
Africans MUST resist this eurocentric trend to 'contaminate' African societies with european deviances.
The Europeans have totally infected South African with their homosexual deviance. This MUST be reversed in Africa!
This person speaks with all the wisdom of the true ignorance. No wonder Africa is at the bottom in standards of living and human development. All I can say is that I hope my Government does not contribute one cent to Uganda if law should pass. I would also ask that Uganda be expelled from the commonwealth, or if that is not possible then my country Australia should suspend all participation in commonwealth affairs. This sort of law makes Uganda look much worse than apartheid South Africa.
to petermelb2001 and all the likes who cite withdrawal of financial support by your governments; we would rather stay in material poverty than get morally bankrupt! no amount of money can buy back our morality back once we lose it... and the worst form of poverty is that which is inside your soul!l. No wonder you try hard to fill it with money and all sorts of pervasion and seek to control others with money...
If you feel that condemning this bill is eurocentric that is your right. If it is voted in and supported by the majority of Ugandans remember a few more things -- Jesus never cared about what the majority said, he stood up for those who were persecuted for whatever reason and, look at your bible carefully,never spoke against homosexuality -- those words came from imperfect humans who said they heard it from God. Jesus, the only perfect human, never had a problem with it. So, I am sure that when foreign governments start withdrawing the financial aid that makes up 40% of the Ugandan national government's budget due to this hateful law that you will have no "right" to complain as living standards slide and more suffering comes. Perhaps then you will know a little more how it feels to be in danger and pain. Some traditions such as female circumcision and human sacrifice are good things to grow out of, no? Let's add violence against homosexuality to the list. I am an American that is contacting my congressmen and senators to vote for withdrawal of ALL aid to Uganda if this new bill against homosexuality is passed.
If believing in international human rights and that killing someone is wrong (just because they're gay) makes me ethnocentric (i.e.,tendancy to view alien groups or cultures from the perpective of one's own) then I am proud to be enthnocentric.
Were non-Germans who opposed the Nazi Holocaust ethnocentric too? Well then BRAVO for them.
Of course, saying that those who oppose the Uganda anti-gay bill are enthnocentric is ridiculous. Gay people are not hurting anyone else. Gay sex is a consensual act. Tolerance will reduce HIV AIDS because gay people won't fear getting safe-sex counseling and education. But tolerance and education requires love and understanding. For some hate, ignorance and supersitition are so much easier -- no matter what culture or country. The entire Ugandan anti-gay bill disgraces all human beings. It should be scrapped.