Asumani Basalirwa of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 Fame

 

Asumani Basalirwa, Member of the Parliament of Uganda, Bugiri Municipality, in the opposition, JEEMA Party. Famous for having introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 to the Parliament, and he is quite invested in it. He has promised that if it is nullified, he will move it again.

He is famous. Been making the rounds, a celebratory lap of victory once the Bill became an Act. He should, he is famous. And it might be the only bill that he moves that becomes law…, after all, he is in the opposition.

Typical Ugandan legislator indeed. Though he seems to be feeling the heat, complaining that it is the press that keeps talking about the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023.., indeed. But, he has been talking to the BBC, Radio Deutche Welle and others. He is a politician.

And a liar.
Apparently he doesn’t have any idea about the American Right Fundamentalists visit.., [he says maybe because he is a Muslim!]. Well, I am not a believer.., but I know about the Family Watch International group conference in Entebbe which hosted a chunk of his MP colleagues and the President made the appeal to Africa to save the world from homosexuality. I wasn’t there, I am not a believer.., am not in parliament. I know the conference was there. Shame, a politician indeed.

A pawn of course-
Any member of the ruling NRM would have faced Museveni’s wrath for moving without permission. Technically he didn’t need the Executive to assent. The Inter-Religious Council for Uganda needed one.

He is a very proud legislator,
again and again, he reminds one in an interview that he is a legislator. But, typical Ugandan elitism, he believes that his legislative function is in a vacuum, where he ‘legislates’ and that’s all.
He says he doesn’t need to know how many people will be saved from homosexuality by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023. Oh, he also doesn’t need to know how many people need legal aid, and he is bringing a bill to that end. Dear lawyer legislator, in this day and age, even I presume you need an estimate and a budget!

This is the guy who wrote the Bill to outlaw LGBTQ+ identity and he defined and criminalised ‘homosexual touch’!!!
Oh yes, read Asumani Basalirwa’s bill. It is in the annals of Ugandan history. According to what he wrote, even identifying as ‘Gay’ was enough to earn you prison.

As for the challenges to the HIV/AIDS program,
the proud legislators answers are informative. They are all a variety of ‘its doesn’t concern me’, ‘I am not to blame’, ‘Someone else should have checked’, ‘They didn’t tell me’, As I said, he is a mighty writer of the law, in the vacuum of his considerable experience.

And, he is of the elite of Uganda.
He doesn’t really care that life prolonging treatment of HIV for One million plus Ugandans was put at risk by his actions. Oh no, he goes for treatment to India or Turkey, or Dubai…, why the hell would he have to worry about his constituents who cannot fly out of the country for treatment?
Nope. He is a legislator, he doesn’t have to worry about any planning for the projected budget shortfall because of his bill. Others should do something.

Selfish, oriented to ‘I, myself, my concerns’, and that is all that seems to concern Asumani Basalirwa… Supremely ignorant and proud of not wanting to educate himself. A politician’s shrug of the shoulder, nothing concerns him, but what concerns him directly.

What a shining example of a legislator in Uganda!
Unfortunately, he is quite a good example of most of so called ‘Ugandan Elite’. Oh, they do call themselves that.

 

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Conversion ‘Therapy’ in the Anti-homosexuality bill 2023

When I realised the big role Family Watch International has been playing in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023, I went back to comb the material for ‘conversion therapy’

Family Watch International are ideologues. Their concerns are very specific and their plank of remedies doesn’t change. They advocate for ‘conversion therapy’, insisting that LGBTQ people ‘can be healed’. There should be, and there must be opportunities offered for ‘conversion therapy’. Yes, it is quackery. And they cannot do it back in America. But, they are going to offer it as a platform to promote in poor, ignorant, bewildered, enthralled Africa. After all, it makes them look ‘concerned’ and not just full of hate.

The Inter-Religious Council in Uganda kicked off the anti-homosexuality bill on 15 Feb 2023 with the meeting reported here.

Amongst some very crazy, impractical, fascist recommendations by the dear religious leaders were some which tendered towards ‘conversion therapy. Check out this.

“The Archbishop of Church of Uganda, Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu, who doubles as the chairperson of the IRCU, urged all religions to open centres to provide counselling and support to people who could have been involved in homosexuality.”

Going back to Asumani Basalirwa’s draft bill, I found this clause, under ‘Special Powers of the Court’

Part IV- Miscellaneous

15. Special Powers of Court

(1) The Court shall, in determining whether to impose a sentence of imprisonment for any related offences under this Act, have regard to the need for rehabilitating the person and may, order the Minister to facilitate the rehabilitation of that person in the length of the period of the sentence

(2) In assessing the need for rehabilitation, the court shall have regard to-

(a) evidence of past conduct and behaviour of the offender;

(b) character of the offender; and

(c) criminal record.

That sounds very suspiciously like an offer for ‘conversion therapy’ under duress of a prison sentence.

I am no lawyer. Just a very suspicious Ugandan kuchu. I know that quite a number of people are being offered ‘conversion therapy’ in Uganda.
Fact, Ugandan doctors are as homophobic as the rest of the population. And, not many of them have a clue with regards to what they should know about homosexuality and the purported cures. [I don’t have access to the final bill, so am not sure whether this section made it there]

Nevertheless, a Ugandan Canadian paediatrician in the diaspora had this article published in the Monitor. It was his experience and education, starting off as a basic ‘pathologically homophobic’ Ugandan, to a medic who can put his feelings aside for the sake of his patient. It is an informative, fascinating read, here. But, the paragraph i want is this;

“What we know is that homosexuality is not due to troubled family relationships, or “recruitment.” We also know that homosexuality is not “curable” through conversion or reparative therapy. First, you do not cure a non-disease. Second, conversion therapy is based on an unscientific assumption that people with a non-traditional sexual orientation, such as homosexuals, are psychologically damaged and that changing their sexual orientation will benefit not only the individual but also society. These so-called therapies, which are known to be performed in more than 60 countries, include counselling (some with verbal abuse and humiliation), prayers, psychiatric medications, hormone injections, aversion therapies where nausea-inducing medications are given alongside presentation of homoerotic stimuli, and application of electric shock to the brain, or to the hands and genitals. Other methods include exorcism, ritual cleansing through beating the patient, force-feeding or food deprivation, forced nudity, solitary confinement, hypnosis, and “corrective” rape. Besides lack of medical and scientific validity, so-called conversion therapy has potentially harmful physical and psychological consequences. It is inhuman, cruel, degrading and completely unjustifiable “treatment” that has absolutely no place in the ethical”

Gosh, talk of torture, in the name of curing what is not broken. But, that might be what is coming…

 

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Uganda Catholic Church’s Silence

Uganda’s Catholic Church Fathers are playing Blind, Deaf and Dumb.., to the Anti-Homosexuality Death Bill…

Have I been too harsh judging their silence? 

No. I am not.
Ugandans, like a lot of African countries, are quite religious. Religious organisations are powerful here. Just look at how the Inter-religious Council actually initiated passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023.
But, apart from that power, these powerful men and women are highly hypocritical. The talk is just talk. What they do, how they behave would be scandalous, in any country other than Uganda. You remember Pastor Ssempa showing gay porn in church?   It is exposure in the foreign press that actually stopped him. In Uganda, he showed it multiple times in Churches and other public spaces, and it was only remarkable in the numbers who took the time to go ‘see for themselves’.
Someone took the trouble to list, without names, some of the ‘more recent’ Pastors scandals here. From bigamy, adultery, ‘homosexuality’ and others.

Calling out the Uganda Catholic Church’s deep, abiding hypocrisy, when I have the utterances of the Pope, the current, living, Pope to support me is just sense. 

I am [relatively] sure that when they comment on Uganda’s Homosexual Death bill, they will be the essential biblical Pharisee hypocrites, [in this story]  and they will throw up their hands and say, oh, we don’t agree with a few things, but the bill is law…!

In the AP interview on 25^th Jan 2023, Pope Francis noted that some Catholic Bishops advocated for criminalisation of homosexuality. He had just stated that homosexuality is a sin, just as much as a lack of ‘charity’ was also a sin… He stated.

“Acknowledging that some Catholic bishops nevertheless support criminalization, he said “these bishops have to have a process of conversion,” adding that they should apply “tenderness.””

Is the silence from the Catholic Church in Uganda the sort of ‘tenderness’ Pope Francis is talking about?

Or is it playing the Pope Pius XII handbook, hoping for exoneration later on?

 

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