Article Image

IPFS News Link • Death Penalty

Death penalty removed from Ugandan ‘Kill the Gays’ bill

• Arturo Garcia via RawStory.com

Ugandan lawmakers removed the death penalty from an anti-LGBT bill set to be debated by the country’s parliament next week, the BBC reported Saturday.

The proposal, called the “Kill The Gays” bill when first introduced three years ago, has undergone other unspecified “revisions,” said MP Medard Segona, who was part of the country’s Legal and Parliamentary committee. The committee reviewed the bill this week and endorsed it, paving the way for parliamentary debate.

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda; according to CNN, the latest version of the bill substitutes life in prison as a penalty for offering shelter to a gay person, refusing to notify police if they suspect someone is gay, and “touching another person with intent of committing homosexuality.”

The new version of the bill also punishes “aggravated homosexuality” — which, the bill says, occurs when one of the participants is disabled, underage, HIV-positive or a “serial offender” — with life in prison, and calls for harsher penalties overall against LGBT individuals or supporters.


midfest.info