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Away from the minister Engola shooting, Dr Kiiza Besigye’s Wife Winnie Byanyima is on the receiving end from netizens mostly Africans who are blasting her over her comments in an interview she held from Kenya few days ago that outrightly supported homosexuality and how it’s paramount in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
The UNAIDS director says when laws that criminalize homosexuality are enacted, it increases the spread and HIV infections among the homosexuals
‘When you repeal criminal laws on same sex relations, that the risk of new infections among gay men (men who have sex with men) drops significantly because you don’t have everything underground all the time”-says Winnie Byanyima in a video posted on her socials
Byanyima who was speaking to TRT World a Turkish public broadcast service journalist Imran Garda on the sidelines of a gathering dubbed ‘Young People In Action’ in Kajiado county-Kenya says as UNAIDs they keep showing this to leaders especially political leaders on the need to repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality but they’re hellbent on preserving their cultural norms and morals.
“We have evidence to show that and we show it to leaders but political leaders are trapped by the conservative forces in their countries, so they continue to press against some of them even to oppress like in my country Uganda to oppress LGBTQ people, men who have sex with men, transgender people”-Byanyima further says.
She further says that it’s these oppressive laws that have made the HIV/AIDs to continue souring up instead of going down yet countries want to end the disease by 2030. Byanyima says the group where HIV/AIDs are growing instead of going down are gay men, transgender, sex workers, people who inject drugs but still governments go ahead to enact policies that drive them away from treatment.
Her comments come at a time when parliament yesterday passed the Anti-homosexuality bill 2023 and sent it back to president Museveni to sign it into law who earlier last week sent it back to parliament on grounds that it had some provisions that needed to be improved especially on people who voluntarily come out to confess that they are or have been gays and need rehabilitation.
Museveni has been under intense pressure not to sign the Anti-homosexuality bill which activists and western donors say is not necessary and have since threatened to pull out funding that support HIV related programs including buying ARVs and this would risk the lives of the 1.2m Ugandans living with AIDs.
When parliament first passed the bill in March 2023, Winnie Byanyima came out with guns blazing saying that the Anti-homosexuality bill once signed into law would be a ‘bad’ law that infringes on the rights of Ugandans but also waters down efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDs.
She has over time been a crusader for a homosexuality and has always come out to defend her son Besigye Anselm whose characters clearly shows he is gay and seems to be transgendering because of the girl like attires he puts on, the lifestyle and the breasts he currently possesses.
It’s not clear whether the president will risk the lives of the HIV infected Ugandans and sign the bill or trash it to keep the funding coming in. He will choose between the huge funding from the western world that supports key sectors of his government like Security, Education, Health, Democracy among others or sign the bill and fund all these from different avenues or use the little that his government collects from Taxes.
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