Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni signs an anti-homosexual bill into law at the state house in Entebbe, 36 km (22 miles) southwest of the capital Kampala February 24, 2014. 
 
 WASHINGTON The United States on Thursday cut aid to Uganda, imposed visa restrictions and canceled a regional military exercise in response to a Ugandan law that imposes harsh penalties on homosexuality. 
 
 The White House said in a statement the measures were intended to "reinforce our support for human rights of all Ugandans regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity." 
 
 Homosexuality is taboo in most African countries and illegal in 37, including in Uganda where it has been a crime since British rule. 
 
 Uganda's new law, signed by President Yoweri Museveni in February, imposes jail terms of up to life for "aggravated homosexuality" which includes homosexual sex with a minor or while HIV-positive. 
 
 Widely condemned by donor countries, the law also criminalizes lesbianism for the first time and makes it a crime to help individuals engage in homosexual acts. 
 
 Western donors, including the United States, had halted or re-directed about $118 million in aid to the east African nation's economy before Thursday's announcement. 
 
 The White House said on Thursday the United States would impose visa restrictions on Ugandans it believes have been involved in human rights violations, including gay rights. 
 
 The United States will halt $2.4 million in funding for a Ugandan community policing program in light of a police raid on a U.S.-funded health program at Makerere University and reports of people detained and abused while in police custody. 
 
 In addition, Washington will shift some funding for salaries and travel expenses of Ugandan health ministry employees to non-governmental agencies involved in health programs. 
 
 It will also reallocate $3 million in funding for a planned national public health institute in Uganda to another African country, which it did not name. A National Institutes of Health genomics meeting would be moved from Uganda to South Africa, the White House said. 
 
 It also canceled plans for a U.S.-sponsored military exercise in Uganda that was meant to include other East African countries. A date had not yet been set for the exercise. 
 
 Uganda is a key Western ally in the fight against Islamic extremism in Somalia, where Ugandan troops for the backbone of the African Union force battling al Qaeda-aligned militants. 
 
 U.S. special forces have also been involved in the hunt for Joseph Kony, the elusive rebel commander seeking to topple the Ugandan government. Kony is believed to be hiding in the jungles of central Africa. 
 
 In Kampala, a government official asked about the U.S. measures said that Uganda would not alter its decision to toughen laws against homosexuals. 
 
 "Uganda is a sovereign country and can never bow to anybody or be blackmailed by anybody on a decision it took in its interests, even if it involves threats to cut off all financial assistance," government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama previously told Museveni the law would complicate relations between the two countries. Since then Washington has been reviewing its funding to Uganda, while privately pressing Museveni's government to repeal the law. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kampala; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Cynthia Osterman) ||||| Story highlights U.S. pulls funding from Uganda's government 
 
 Move is in response to Uganda's anti-gay law 
 
 Washington also cancels a planned military exercise 
 
 Uganda's President signed measure earlier this year 
 
 Uganda's government institutions will lose U.S. funding as punishment for a law signed earlier this year by President Yoweri Museveni that makes some homosexual acts punishable by life in prison. 
 
 In addition, the White House said Thursday that Washington will cancel a planned military exercise with Uganda and deny entry to certain Ugandan citizens, including those "involved in serious human rights abuses, including against LGBT individuals." 
 
 The United States will not end its humanitarian support for Uganda or its cooperation to stamp out the Lord's Resistance Army, led by the elusive Joseph Kony 
 
 "We will seek to advance these interests even as we continue -- in Uganda and around the world -- to oppose discriminatory practices and champion human rights for all," read the statement by White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. 
 
 Uganda's anti-homosexuality act, first introduced in 2009, originally included a death penalty clause for some such acts. It was briefly shelved when Britain and other European nations threatened to withdraw aid to Uganda, which relies on millions of dollars from the international community. 
 
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 Museveni signed the bill into law in February, two months after Uganda's Parliament passed it after replacing a death penalty provision with a proposal of life in prison for "aggravated homosexuality." This includes acts in which one person is infected with HIV, "serial offenders" and sex with minors, according to Amnesty International. 
 
 The law calls for the imprisonment of those who counsel or reach out to gays and lesbians -- a provision that would ensnare rights groups and others providing services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. 
 
 Museveni's position on the law changed several times before he signed it. 
 
 At one point, he said he wouldn't sign the bill, describing homosexuals as "sick" people who needed help, not imprisonment. 
 
 He said he changed his mind after scientists had determined that there is no gene for homosexuality and that it is merely a choice to embrace abnormal behavior. ||||| South Sudanese soldiers load bullets into their assault rifles before setting off for a raid on a Lord’s Resistance Army camp in the Congo at a camp in Nzara, South Sudan. 
 
 Sept. 17, 2013 South Sudanese soldiers load bullets into their assault rifles before setting off for a raid on a Lord’s Resistance Army camp in the Congo at a camp in Nzara, South Sudan. Rajiv Chandrasekaran/The Washington Post 
 
 Obama has ordered an increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda to find warlord Joseph Kony; here are photos from the hunt in September. Kony, whose forces have spent years attacking central African villages, mutilating civilians and stealing children, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. 
 
 Obama has ordered an increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda to find warlord Joseph Kony; here are photos from the hunt in September. Kony, whose forces have spent years attacking central African villages, mutilating civilians and stealing children, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. 
 
 Obama has ordered an increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda to find warlord Joseph Kony; here are photos from the hunt in September. Kony, whose forces have spent years attacking central African villages, mutilating civilians and stealing children, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. 
 
 President Obama has ordered a sharp increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda and sent U.S. military aircraft there for the first time in the ongoing effort to hunt down warlord Joseph Kony across a broad swath of central Africa. 
 
 The CV-22 Osprey aircraft will arrive in Uganda by midweek, along with refueling aircraft and about 150 Air Force Special Operations forces and other airmen to fly and maintain the planes, according to Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs. At least four Ospreys will be deployed. 
 
 The White House began to notify Congress, under the War Powers Act, of the new deployments as they began Sunday night. Dory and other officials emphasized that the Ospreys will be used for troop transport and that the rules of engagement for U.S. forces remain the same as for about 100 Special Operations troops that Obama first sent to help find Kony in October 2011. 
 
 U.S. personnel are authorized to “provide information, advice and assistance” to an African Union military task force tracking Kony and his organization, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), across Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo. While combat-equipped, they are prohibited from engaging LRA forces unless in self-defense. 
 
 The new War Powers Act notification sets the approximate total for all U.S. forces in Uganda at 300. 
 
 View Graphic A map of the Lord's Resistance Army area of influence 
 
 Kony, whose forces have spent years attacking central African villages, mutilating civilians and stealing children, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. His organization is thought to have been decimated in recent years through military action against it and defections. 
 
 LRA attacks have decreased significantly and the number of people killed has dropped more than 75 percent since 2010, said Grant Harris, a special assistant to Obama and senior African affairs director for the National Security Council. Three of the organization’s five commanders have been “removed . . . from the battlefield” since May 2012, he said, including “credible reporting” that second-in-command Okot Odhiambo was killed late last year. 
 
 Force shifts its location 
 
 But Kony has not been definitively sighted for some time. His force is now thought to number no more than 250 fighters who shift position frequently within a wide area across the target countries. Most recently, he has been thought to be somewhere in the heavy jungle of the eastern Central African Republic, a country in the midst of political upheaval and virtually without a government. 
 
 U.S. and A.U. forces pursuing Kony operate out of bases in Uganda. Administration officials who described the new deployments insisted they did not imply any weakening in the Obama administration’s criticism of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for signing a new law imposing harsh penalties for “homosexual offenses.” 
 
 Obama warned that the law, passed last month by the Ugandan parliament, was a “step backward for all Ugandans,” and the administration said it would review bilateral relations, including $400 million in annual U.S. aid to Uganda. 
 
 “Ensuring justice and accountability for human rights violators like the LRA and protecting” the rights of gay and transgendered persons “are not mutually exclusive,” Harris said. 
 
 He said the administration has already moved to shift funding away from partners “whose actions don’t reflect” U.S. values, including $6.4 million that had been designated for the Interreligious Council of Uganda, which has supported the legislation. 
 
 A planned survey of key populations at risk for HIV, to be jointly conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Uganda University, has also been suspended because “we think proceeding could cause danger to staff and respondents,” Harris said. 
 
 He said that approximately $3 million in tourism and biodiversity promotion programs has been transferred from the Ugandan government to nongovernmental organizations. The Pentagon has also shifted regional military conferences that were to be held in Uganda to other locations. 
 
 “We are continuing to look at additional steps we might take,” Harris said, and “continue to urge Uganda to repeal the law.” 
 
 Quick transport of troops 
 
 Dory, at the Pentagon, declined to specify the exact number of Ospreys that are being sent to Uganda or where they would be based inside the country. 
 
 The Pentagon, the State Department and A.U. task force commanders requested the aircraft last year to better enable the quick transport of troops to areas where they have received intelligence about Kony. 
 
 Ospreys are tilt-rotor aircraft capable of landing and lifting straight off the ground like helicopters, but they can also fly and land as fixed-wing planes. They are faster, and with their refueling capability, they can fly farther than the small, fixed-wing contract aircraft being used in the mission. 
 
 Each can carry about 24 troops, and the aircraft are equipped with .50-caliber machine guns for self-defense. “They will make a significant difference in the ability to respond to leads” about Kony’s whereabouts, many of them generated through growing defections from Kony’s ranks, Dory said. 
 
 The deployment is also “an excellent example of being able to share assets between different combatant commands,” she said. Normally based in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, under the U.S. Central Command — which oversees the Middle East — the Ospreys are temporarily being transferred to the Africa Command. The deployment is temporary, officials said, but they provided no estimate of how long they will remain in Uganda. 
 
 The LRA poses no threat to the United States, but the administration sees assistance to the A.U. mission as a useful way to build military and political partnerships with African governments in a region where al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are rapidly expanding, as well as to demonstrate adherence to human rights principles. 
 
 Although critics accuse Obama of “weakness” in Syria and the administration has been challenged by Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, the Uganda action is a relatively inexpensive way to show resolve in a popular cause. 
 
 LRA atrocities publicized on the Internet sparked interest among tens of thousands of young people in the United States, many of whom wrote their members of Congress. In 2009, Congress passed legislation expressing “support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.”
– Uganda's harsh new anti-gay law—which makes "aggravated homosexuality" punishable by life in prison—is costing the country: The US yesterday cut aid to Uganda over it, and didn't stop there. It slapped visa restrictions on Ugandans believed by the US to have been involved in human rights violations or corruption, the AP reports; a planned National Institutes of Health meeting will be moved from Uganda to South Africa; and a planned military exercise with Uganda has been axed. Among the aid cuts: $2.4 million that was meant to fund a Ugandan community policing program has been halted, and $3 million planned to fund a national public health institute will be reallocated to another unnamed African country. The moves "reinforce our support for human rights of all Ugandans regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity," the White House said in a statement, according to Reuters. But a government spokesperson in Uganda was unswayed: "Uganda is a sovereign country and can never bow to anybody or be blackmailed by anybody on a decision it took in its interests, even if it involves threats to cut off all financial assistance," he says. And Uganda has experienced more than threats: Before yesterday's announcement it had already seen $118 million in aid from Western donors pulled. The US will continue its involvement in the hunt for Joseph Kony, CNN notes.