Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni mixed homophobia with anticolonial sentiments recently, warning a group of youths in his country that “European homosexuals” were recruiting in Africa.

Museveni spoke at an event in Kampala for high-achieving young people on November 14, according to the U.K.'s Daily Monitor.

“I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa,” Museveni said, according to the Monitor. “We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”

Last month a bill was introduced in parliament that would make Uganda, a devoutly Christian country, one of the most dangerous places in the world for gay people and their allies. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill would completely outlaw gay sex and the “promotion of homosexuality,” with prison sentences of up to seven years for people convicted of aiding and abetting gay activities and the death penalty for repeated instances of gay sex, or any instance of same-sex relations in which one partner is under 18 or HIV-positive.