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Strässer condemns Anti-Homosexuality Law in Uganda
The Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy has condemned in the strongest possible terms the signing into law of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda.
Christoph Strässer, the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy, has condemned in the strongest possible terms the signing into law of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni.
He likewise condemned the publication of a list of Uganda’s “top homosexuals” on the front page of a Ugandan newspaper. Such a publication violated the human rights of the people concerned, he said, including their right to privacy and equal treatment. Strässer continued:
Human rights are universal and indivisible. The Ugandan state is under an obligation to respect, protect and promote the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. The media, too, have a duty to respect human rights.
I call upon the Ugandan state to protect all its citizens against violence, exclusion, discrimination and arbitrary punishment and to abolish all laws that contravene human rights obligations, including the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that was signed yesterday.
You can read the full statement made by Christoph Strässer here.
Life imprisonment for homosexuality
On 24 February, Uganda’s President Museveni signed into law an Anti-Homosexuality Bill making it a punishable offence to engage in homosexual acts and for activists and organisations to support the human rights of LGBTI people. The spectrum of possible punishment ranges up to life in prison. One day after the law came into effect, a Ugandan tabloid published a list of 200 “top homosexuals”.
More information
Protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual persons