2023-08-28 23:29:51
A 20-year-old man has been charged with “aggravated homosexuality” in Uganda, a qualification provided for by a law enacted in May, considered one of the most repressive in the world, we learned on Monday from a judicial source. The suspect was “charged in Soroti and he has been incarcerated”, Ugandan prosecutors’ spokeswoman Jacquelyn Okui said.
According to the indictment, the young man is accused of having had “unlawful sexual intercourse with (…) a 41-year-old adult man”. At the end of May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed into law an anti-homosexuality law which imposes heavy penalties for those who have same-sex relationships and who “promote” homosexuality. The crime of “aggravated homosexuality” is punishable by death, a sentence which has not, however, been applied for years in Uganda.
No more projects financed in Uganda by the World Bank
This law has sparked outrage from the United Nations, human rights groups and many Western countries. At the beginning of August, the World Bank announced that it would no longer finance new projects in Uganda following the promulgation of this law, considering that this text “went fundamentally against the values of the World Bank”.
US President Joe Biden has called the law a “serious violation” of human rights and threatened to suspend aid and investment in Uganda, while the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell saw it as a law “contrary to human rights”. humans”.
The new legislation nevertheless received broad support in Uganda, a country with a conservative Christian majority, where lawmakers said the text was a necessary bulwark against alleged immorality in the West. President Museveni also accused the World Bank of wanting to “put pressure” on his country. Ugandans “will grow with or without loans,” he said.
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