Critics slam BBC’s online poll on Uganda gays

A debate in the House of Commons last week labelled Uganda’s proposed Bill on homosexuality as abhorrent.

The debate followed some sustained criticism for the BBC, which posted a comments section on its website asking whether homosexuals should be killed.

The Bill proposes the death penalty for any HIV positive person who takes part in a homosexual act, and life imprisonment for anyone convicted of the “offence” of homosexuality.

More than 600 people posted their views and while some agreed that gay men and women should be killed, others were appalled that the debate was being conducted online, terming it as “disgusting”.

In the House of Commons debate, Eric Joyce, the Labour member for Falkirk, told fellow MPs: “We should be looking at what is going on in Uganda with abhorrence. We should be condemning it, and the BBC should be condemning it, just as we do sexual violence in the Congo or genocide in Rwanda or Darfur.”

Mr Joyce described the BBC debate as a “disgrace” adding: “Is the BBC really there to provide credibility to a vile discussion around a profoundly hideous and savage piece of legislation? No, of course not.”

However, the editor of the World Service Africa programme, David Stead, told the Daily Telegraph that staff had “thought long and hard about using this question..... which has already sparked a lot of debate around the world, and understandably led to us receiving many e-mails and texts. We have sought to moderate these rigorously while at the same time trying to reflect the hugely diverse views about homosexuality in Africa.”

There are an estimated 500,000 gay people in Uganda out of a population of 31 million, according to homosexual rights groups.