By Melanie Nathan, Nov, 23, 2012
This Video news report appeared today on Ugandan Television announcing that the legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee has endorsed the anti-Homosexuality Bill. The report shows interviews with members of the Legal and Parliamentary Committee which has just completed its report and sent the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into Parliament for its second reading and debate toward passage, next week.
The Bill has exceeded its time in Committee. Human Rights activists and heads of State have spoken against it. The talk has been that the death penalty has been taken out of the Bill. That does not however lesson the gravity of the Bill, even if it is true. The Bill is plagued with practical problems such as that noted by the question as to how one will police people in their bedrooms?
The report utilizes old footage of known LGBTI Ugandans in between the current interviews with members of the biased and anti–gay Committee. This video was taken outside the Courthouse in Uganda, back in 2010, when renowned and murdered activist David Kato was still alive. I find the use of this old footage to compliment the Video report to be quite strange. It seems odd to find Kato in footage that depicts current times.
The footage shows LGBTI activists bravely unafraid of the impending dangers, yet the footage is old and the context at the time had nothing to do with the Committee or the Kill the Gays Bill, the subject of this piece. By association of course, known Gays and lesbians have everything to do with the Bill because the subjects could feasibly be arrested if a case for homosexuality or promotion thereof could be proved against them. One imagines that cases of promotion of homosexuality under the new Bill will have to relate ONLY to cases from the date the Bill is enacted and effective. SO the Courts cannot convict anyone retroactively.
If the activists shown in these pictures are facing impending arrest once the BIll passes Parliament next week, one wonders how the Ugandans plan to prosecute and prove their cases of criminal homosexuality. Prosecutors may well find themselves in an evidentiary bind as they try and figure out the flimsy definitions and unchartered nuances of the new Bill.
Related articles
- Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill on way to Parliament from Committee (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
- Ugandan Anti-Gay Pastor Says ‘Kill the Gays Bill’ Wwill not help solve problem of homosexuality (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
- Uganda Coalition of Leaders Promote Kill the Gays with Lies (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
- United Kingdom cruel response to Ugandan asylum seeker (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
- Ugandan Speaker Taunts World vowing to revive Kill the Gays Bill (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
![speaker mel nathan](http://oblogdeeoblogda.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/africanhrc.png?w=300"%20alt="africanhrc"%20width="300"%20height="300"%20/></a>)
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The UN seems to step in everywhere there are atrocities like this- why aren’t they formally denouncing Uganda’s president/gov’t & trying to do something here? This is Nazi Germany all over again.
probably can only denounce after legislated . But the sec gen has denounced.