Ever since Museveni (right) and his National Resistance Movement fought their way to power in 1986, the people of Uganda have experienced a period of relative calm. They have been able to settle down to an everyday life less absorbed by anxiety and injustice. Ugandans have been told they need no longer fear voicing their opinion, but life is not always easy for those who do. And reports hint that there are other Ugandans who seem to be less equal than others.

Uganda features quite prominently in Amnesty International's 1994 report covering the period from January to December 1993. The report, featured in the Ugandan daily, The New Vision of July 14, focuses on five main areas of human rights violations in Uganda: unfair trial and detentions; ill-treatment while in detention; harsh prison conditions; violations committed by armed opponents of the government; and the death penalty.

Ssezi Cheeye

AI cites a number of instances of unfair trial and detention. Uganda Confidential editor, Ssezi Cheeye, was detained for five days for "publishing and printing seditious material in an article alleging that senior government officials were guilty of nepotism in public appointments." In December, Cheeye faced further sedition charges relating to an article published in August alleging that Janet Museveni, wife of the President, was implicated in a murder. By the end of the year, neither Cheeye, nor Hussein Musa Njuki, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Shariat, detained for eleven days, nor Haruna Kanabi, a Shariat sub-editor, detained for nearly three weeks, both on sedition charges, had been tried.

Ugandan authorities reduced the number of prisoners facing the capital charge of treason and also the number of political prisoners detained without charge, but new arrests were made during military operations in eastern Uganda.

Ill-treatment

AI refers to several reports of torture and ill-treatment by soldiers, members of the paramilitary Local Defence Units, police and prison officers. In November, for example, three N.R.A. soldiers were arrested in Kabale after they deliberately burned a man in their custody. In March, a military intelligence officer in West Nile confined three men in a pit in a barracks near Kaboko for five hours. He then beat them and set them free.

The Amnesty report goes on to say that in 1993, convicted criminal prisoners in Uganda died while in custody because of harsh prison conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Four prisoners reportedly died in Masafu prison in eastern Uganda where prison guards were said to have regularly beaten and tortured prisoners. District officials visiting prisons in Kabarole to investigate prison deaths reported that prisoners were being kept virtually naked in "appalling conditions", were malnourished and were receiving inadequate medical care.

Violations and capital punishment

In 1993, armed opponents of the government abducted civilians and government officials and committed rape and deliberate and arbitrary killings. In April, for example, five girls were abducted and raped by UPA rebels in Kumi district; two were freed by N.R.A. soldiers. In January, March and July, nine R.C. officials and villagers were deliberately killed by the rebels in the same district.

Amnesty's report also notes that the death penalty was repeatedly carried out in Uganda in 1993. In March, for example, nine men convicted of murder in previous years were reportedly hanged in Luzira Prison. Another instance was the condemnation of at least ten people to death by the high court for various offences, including treason.

Swedish support

People's rights are also tampered with in political training programmes that Ugandans are expected to attend when they the authorities ask them to do so. Reports in the Ugandan press recently alleged that people, among them women, were literally forced to attend. It seems that these programmes, for which participants must pay, dance to classical government tunes and that any other tunes are strongly discouraged.

On August 12, 1994, The New Vision published a letter written by a Swedish Amnesty International working group from Lund. The group referred to what a former head of the National Swedish Police, who had visited the country in September, 1993, had said when he described Uganda as perhaps the most encouraging and hopeful human rights scene in all of Africa. However, it the letter, the Amnesty working group went on to encourage the President and his government to investigate the killings of a number of people who, according to their information, were "extrajudicially executed by N.R.A. [government] soldiers" in the villages of Odusai and Pasia in the district of Pallisa.

The right to be listened to

Another right Ugandans share with people everywhere is the right to be listened to. With the international spotlight on what is going on in a country there's usuaslly a better chance that the house will be put in order. The people of Uganda have come a very long way, and there were some cruel years not so long ago when many of them thought the nightmare would last for ever. They have indeed been through a lot, and they have a right, and deserve, to be listened to and supported.

 

© Adrian Grima (1994)
Published in The Times (Malta)

Lura lejn Artikli Ġenerali | Back to General Articles

Lura lejn L-Ewwel Paġna | Back to First Page