On Thursday, February 16, 2023, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda accused Europe of attempting to “impose” homosexuality on the African nation, where LGBTIQ people are oppressed and subject to several stigmas.
The representative from Uganda, who was speaking at a demonstration to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the murder of that nation’s archbishop Janani Luwum by the regime of Idi Amin (1971-1979).
“I want to congratulate Ugandan believers for rejecting homosexuality. Europeans don’t listen to us when we tell them that this problem of homosexuality is something we should not normalize or celebrate,” he added.
According to Museveni, “It is true that there were some homosexuals (in Uganda) before the Europeans arrived, but it was a deviation from the norm, like a person with six fingers instead of five.”
The Ugandan President made these remarks a day after the Uganda Inter-Religious Council (IRCU) declared its intention to reintroduce to the nation’s parliament a law that was tabled years ago and would have given life in jail for “repeat homosexuals.”
Museveni approved that legislation in February 2014, but six months later Uganda’s Constitutional Court declared it invalid on the grounds that there was insufficient support for it in parliament.
Debates concerning this law sparked a surge of attacks on LGBTIQ people in Uganda, some of which resulted in their deaths. These attacks were largely motivated by well-known missionary preachers.
Today, Uganda’s legal code still contains a statute from 1950, 12 years before the country won independence from the UK, that punishes same-sex relationships with up to 7 years in prison.
