Singer Charli XCX: I will never return to Uganda over anti-gay laws
A British singer whose mother is from Uganda has vowed to never return to the African country, over its anti-gay laws.
22-year-old Charli XCX – known for her songs I Love It and Boom Clap – says she used to visit her mother’s homeland regularly – but will never return there, after it passed an anti-gay law.
She told the Metro: “I have been to Uganda when I was younger. It was amazing, but I wouldn’t go there now because I am so anti a lot of the laws that have been passed there.
“It was really upsetting that that’s the road the government decided to go down. I’m never going back there. It’s a terrible, backwards decision.”
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed earlier this year, but was struck down by the country’s Constitutional Court in August, who found that Parliamentary procedures had been abused to pass it illegally.
However, last week a leaked copy of a new draft emerged, titled the Prohibition of the Promotion of Unnatural Sexual Practices Bill, which is even more extreme than the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
n addition to banning homosexuality outright, the country would also adopt a Russia-style ban on the “promotion” of homosexuality, which can be used to stifle dissent.
Broader-reaching parts of the law also target charities and NGOs who work on LGBT rights, attacking “funding for purposes of promoting unnatural sexual practices”, and also makes it a crime to “make a representation … by whatever means of a person engaged in real or fictitious unnatural sexual practices”.
