Uganda's president signed an anti-gay bill Monday that provides for prison sentences ranging up to life behind bars, saying it is needed because the West is promoting homosexuality in Africa, according to the Associated Press.
The new law goes into effect immediately and calls for first-time offenders to be sentenced to 14 years in jail, the AP reported.
It sets life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for "aggravated homosexuality," defined as repeated gay sex between consenting adults and acts involving a minor, a disabled person or where one partner is infected with HIV, according to the AP.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned that the law would institutionalize discrimination and could encourage harassment and violence against gays, the AP reported.
The law is expected to send the country's beleaguered gay community further underground as the police try to implement it amid fevered anti-gay sentiment, the AP reported. At least six people have already been arrested over alleged homosexual offenses and more than a dozen have fled Uganda since lawmakers passed the bill in December, according to a prominent Ugandan gay activist, Pepe Julian Onziema.
"The president is making this decision because he has never met an openly gay person. That disappoints me," Onziema said, according to the AP.
President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill at the presidential palace as government officials, journalists and Ugandan scientists looked on, the AP reported. Government officials applauded after Museveni affixed his signature.
Some European countries have threatened to cut aid to Uganda if the measure was enacted. U.S. President Barack Obama warned that signing the bill would "complicate" the East African country's relationship with Washington, according to the AP.
"We Africans never seek to impose our view on others. If only they could let us alone," Museveni said, the AP reported. "We have been disappointed for a long time by the conduct of the West. There is now an attempt at social imperialism."
Museveni accused "arrogant and careless Western groups" of trying to recruit Ugandan children into homosexuality, but he did not name these purported groups, according to the AP.
Museveni said he believes Western homosexuals have targeted poor Ugandans who then "prostitute" themselves for the money, an allegation repeated by the bill's Ugandan defenders, the AP reported. Museveni did not cite any examples of people he called "mercenary homosexuals."
Some critics believe Museveni signed the bill in hopes of galvanizing political support within his party, the National Resistance Movement, ahead of an upcoming meeting that is expected to endorse him as the party's sole choice in the 2016 presidential election, the AP reported.
