By Muhumuza Jimmy
Parliament
The mover of the anti-Homosexuality bill and also the Bugiri Municipality MP Asuman Basalirwa has to today reveal to members of the parliamentary committee of legal affairs that he received threats from people outside the country and the owners of Twitter handlers asking him why he should be going to their country or using their Twitter handle for tabling the anti-homosexual bill.
Basalirwa revealed this while presenting the bill before the Parliamentary Legal Committee chaired by Robinah Rwakojo, “the people we dealing with are powerful across the world and have a lot of money which can be used to do anything, and yesterday I receded threats from Twitter owners asking the reason to why I should continue using Twitter after tabling the anti-homosexual bill.
Basalirwa further proposed that aggravated homosexuality offenses be punishable by 10 years though some MPs on the committee were proposing 17 years being that it encompasses minors, the transmission of HIV/AIDs, and rape against one’s will.
The bill also criminalizes homosexual acts and its punishable by a life sentence and also 2 years for attempted homosexual acts.
Basalirwa justified to the committee that the bill intends to address the gaps in the existing laws that are not sufficient to cab the current verses of homosexuality like procurement, marketing, and dissemination of homosexual information.
However, a member of the committee Fox Odoyi raised concern on some of the silent issues in the bill like people who are bisexual, and heterosexual, and also demanded statistics from Basalirwa claiming that homosexuality is on the rise in the country and added that this is a diversion and instead Basalirwa would propose the repelling of existing laws to merge his proposals to address the homosexuality concerns.
Other members of the committee added that the proposed law should not criminalize the owners of brothels (whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes) because they are not necessarily engaged in homosexuality and the president has been calling people to come and invest in Uganda if they are homosexual how will it happen
The committee will continue to meet other well-wishers to hear their views including religious leaders
