COOLUM, Australia -- After accepting an award for his government's successful campaign against AIDS, Uganda's president declared Sunday that his country has no homosexuals, one of the groups most threatened by the global epidemic.
The comment by President Yoweri Museveni follows a report by a human rights group that accused Uganda and other countries of torturing and mistreating their homosexual populations.
Museveni
has led an aggressive AIDS prevention campaign since 1986 that has been credited with slashing the infection rate among adults in the African nation from 28 percent to less than 10 percent.
He accepted an award for his efforts from the Commonwealth, the association of Britain and its former colonies, at a meeting of the group in Coolum, Australia. Afterward, he listed the ways that the AIDS virus spreads in Uganda.
"First, it goes through unprotected sex. We don't have homosexuals in Uganda so this is mainly heterosexual transmission," he said.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report last June that it had documented cases of homosexuals being tortured in Uganda. The report compiled alleged cases of torture and mistreatment in 30 countries including Uganda, Pakistan, Argentina, Russia and the United States.
Museveni said Sunday that the AIDS virus also spread through "careless blood transfusions" and through tribal customs such as circumcision in which the same knife is used for multiple people.