Uganda will not impose the death penalty for gay sex, a presidential spokesman said on Monday, after major aid donors said they were monitoring a plan by the African nation to reintroduce a bill colloquially known as “Kill the Gays”.
Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo last Thursday said the government planned to re-introduce an anti-homosexuality bill in parliament within weeks to curb the spread of homosexuality in the east African nation.
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Lokodo’s statement was widely reported across the world and international donors such as the European Union, World Bank, the United States and the Global Fund said they were monitoring the situation closely and stood by the rights of LGBT+ people.
A spokesperson for President Yoweri Museveni on Monday said the government has no plans to introduce the legislation that would impose the death penalty for gay sex.
“There are no plans by the government to introduce a law like that,” Don Wanyama, President Museveni’s senior press secretary told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We have the penal code that already handles issues of unnatural sexual behaviour so there is no law coming up.”
Lokodo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation and local press last week that the bill was about to be tabled in the largely conservative Christian country where gay sex is currently punishable with life imprisonment under British colonial law.
This prompted major aid donors on Friday to voice concerns, and a government spokesman took to Twitter on Saturday to deny any such plan.
It was not possible to confirm any link between the donors’ concerns and the government spokesman’s statement on Saturday.
