A row over a law banning homosexuality in Uganda has been reignited after it emerged that the government paid a US public relations firm to offset negative publicity, a report said on Monday.
Uganda’s Observer newspaper said the government spent 614 million shillings (US$206,000) “to prop up Uganda’s image” after it was “tarnished by the Anti-Homosexuality Act.”
It said that many lawmakers in the east African nation’s parliament, where support is strong for tough anti-gay legislation, are now refusing to approve the government’s payment to Scribe Strategies and Advisors, a Washington-based lobbying firm.
“It’s quite unbelievable that the [Ugandan] Ministry of Foreign Affairs could use this money to clear Uganda’s image, yet us as Ugandans, we are against this issue of homosexuality,” Florence Nebanda, one of several reportedly furious lawmakers, was quoted as saying.
Fox Odoi, a lawmaker who opposed the legislation, said that the foreign ministry had informed parliament that the cash was paid to the firm to lobby a bipartisan congressional caucus.
He said the firm was paid “to clear the image of Uganda.”
“The expenditure shows the financial loss the country suffered as a result of the reckless behavior of parliament,” he said.
“That was not the only loss. Several development partners withheld funding to several government agencies. A number of companies also refused to do business with and in Uganda,” he added.
Ugandan Minister of Finance Aston Kajara was also quoted as saying that the fallout from the controversy had resulted in Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni having trouble finding a hotel room in Texas in September last year, when he visited the US state to drum up investment.
“There were campaigns against the government of Uganda to the extent that even the hotel they had booked for him had to change. We engaged consultants to intervene and stem the hostility against the president on behalf of Uganda,” the Observer quoted him as saying.
The anti-gay bill, under which gays could have been jailed for life, was signed into law by Museveni in February last year, but was struck down six months later by the constitutional court on a technicality.
The law drew widespread international condemnation, with US Secretary of State John Kerry likening it to anti-Semitic legislation in Nazi Germany.
Since then lawmakers have proposed another law criminalizing the “promotion” of homosexuality, although activists say it would be equally repressive.
Prominent Ugandan gay rights activist Frank Mugisha said he hoped the new row over spending would make parliament think twice before pushing through any new legislation.
“It would have been cheaper and the government wouldn’t have needed to spend that money if our parliament was not passing laws that are controversial and affecting our economy and international relations,” he said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS