LGBTQIA+ community in SA protests Uganda’s anti-homosexuality Bill

A national coalition of the LGBTQIA+ community wants the United Nations (UN) to pressurise the Ugandan government to drop the anti-homosexuality bill.

It was passed by the Ugandan Parliament but is yet to be signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni.

The Bill if passed into law will criminalise and prosecute same-sex relationships for up to life imprisonment or even death.

Together with other CSOs, we stand in solidarity with #LGBTIQ+ people & CSOs in #Uganda

Statement: we strongly urge President @KagutaMuseveni not to sign #AHB23, which targets his citizens’ very existence and strips them of their constitutional rights👇🏽https://t.co/cjz4Drt8FJ pic.twitter.com/fUyVoE3AtX

— Pan Africa ILGA (@PanAfricaILGA) March 29, 2023

LGBTQIA-plus community protests against Uganda’s anti-Homosexuality Bill

Activist Steve Letsike says they want the UN to mobilise world leaders against this move.

Letsike elaborates, “We want to call on the UN to actually raise the bar around accountability where members who are part of the United Nations are actually in contradiction with the universal declaration of human rights.”

Uganda is among more than 30 African countries that already ban same-sex relations. But the new law would be the first to outlaw merely identifying as LGBTQ — according to the group Human Rights Watch.

About 100 people gathered outside the United Nations Information Centre in Pretoria, singing, dancing, and waving flags.

Activist Steve Letsike is the executive director of ‘Access Chapter 2’, an LGBTQ NGO in Pretoria.

“We should care. Nobody is free until all of us across the world is free. We should care, because the rights violated there, can be rights violated anywhere else. We should care because this has been going on for the longest time.”

The new law not only makes it a crime to be gay — but it includes extreme punishments like life in prison or even the death penalty in certain cases. -Additional reporting by Reuters 

LGBTQ-Plus groups react to Uganda’s anti-Homosexuality Bill: Vanessa Ponaah reports