President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled since 1986, did so in a brief statement on his Twitter account. The law allows the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" for sexual relations involving HIV-infected persons and minors.
Homosexuality is criminalized in the East African country as a "crime against the order of nature", since the laws that governed during colonization. Since independence in 1962 there has never been a conviction for consensual sexual acts between people of the same gender.