The Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Winnie Byanyima, has asked the Government of Uganda to accept homosexuality, describing it as normal and that those involved must be allowed to love and associate freely without criminalizing them.
Byanyima, also the wife of Col (Rtd) Kizza Besigye, the founding chairman of the Forum for Democratic Change, an opposition party in Uganda, argued that gays and lesbians have rights of association and should be left to engage normally.
She strongly condemned the Parliament of Uganda for tabling the bill to prohibit homosexuality and vowed to fight it.
According to Byanyima, the Ugandan Parliament should enact a law that will allow homosexuality and allow the homosexuals exercise “their right to associate” just like a panel of Supreme Court judges of three-to-two in Kenya ruled on February 24.
“Congratulations, Supreme Court of Justice of Kenya and Chief Justice Martha Koome,” Byanyima tweeted after the Kenyan Supreme Court ruled that “it would be unconstitutional to limit the right to associate purely on the basis of sexual orientation”.
“We have the evidence that when you repeal criminal laws on same-sex relations, the risk of contracting HIV falls and the risk of gay men drops significantly,” said Byaniyma.
Recently, Parliament introduced the Anti-homosexuality Bill 2023 that will outlaw same – sex affairs and marriages in Uganda once passed into a law.
In 2019, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni warned the UNAIDS Executive Director against fronting homosexuality, saying it could never be appreciated in Uganda.
“I was telling Hon. Byanyima that we have been careful and never in a hurry to amend that law because for us, we are social actors,” warned President Museveni.
Recently while presiding over celebrations to mark Archbishop Janani Luwum Day in Kitgum District, President Museveni re echoed that Uganda won’t support homosexuality.
“We are not going to follow people who are lost. These Europeans are not normal. They don’t listen,” he said.
He emphasised that Uganda will not embrace homosexuality, and told off the West to stop seeking to impose its views to compel dissenting countries to ” normalise what he called ”deviations”.