President Museveni returns the Ant Homosexuality bill to Parliament

By Francis Lubega

21^st April 2023

President Yoweri Museveni is to meet the parliamentary Legal Committee together with the architecture of the mover of the anti homosexuality bill Asuman Basalirwa who is also the Bugiri Municipality MP.

This was agreed upon by the NRM parliamentary caucus in a meeting chaired by President Museveni at Kololo airstrip on Thursday 20^th April 2023.

Museveni applauded the members of parliament for their stand against homosexuality and agreed to assent to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023 into law once a few changes are made regarding rehabilitation.

Museveni said that, it is good that they rejected the pressure from the imperialists that they have been messing up the world for 600 years causing so much damage adding that most of the problems and the instability in many African countries are caused by imperialists trying to impose what is not meant for Africa.

The President who is also the National Chairman of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) was however informed by the Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka that the bill passed by Parliament in its current form criminalizes even those who voluntarily come out to have practiced homosexuality and need to be helped.

He proposed a provision for amnesty for those who will have come out to be helped not to punish them to allow others not to fear to leave the vice.

The President promised to meet the Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament, the sponsor of the motion Hon. Asuman Basalirwa and other interested parties next week to finalize the bill.

Speaking to journalists at parliament, the government chief whip Denis Hamson Obua said that as a party they resolved to return the Anti Homosexuality bill 2023 so that some clauses in the bill that contradict other laws be amended to avoid legal challenges in courts of law as it was in 2014.

It should be remembered that parliament passed this same bill last month barring acts of homosexuality and punishments like life sentence and death penalties were introduced which even caused some foreign countries to condemn the law.

The bill once brought back to parliament clauses like death penalty will be reviewed for a lesser punishment.

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