Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura
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/ 16 November 2006

Uganda’s laws favour death sentences

In 2003, Corporal James Omedio and Private Abdullah Muhammad stood before a public firing squad in Uganda for killing Irish Catholic priest Declan O’Toole; his driver, Patrick Longoli; and his cook, Fidel Longole. They were executed after they were found guilty by a field court martial, following a trial that lasted two hours and 36 minutes.

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/ 14 September 2006

Uganda drafts Bill to execute HIV infectors

In 1999, an HIV-infected 30-year-old man named Fred Mwanga shocked the country when he raped a three-month-old baby in a Kampala suburb. Even more upsetting, Mwanga’s action was not an isolated incident. The rate of HIV-infected adults sexually abusing the nation’s most vulnerable citizens is rising. As these ill men prey on the minors, they spread the deadly HIV virus.

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/ 11 October 2005

Red Pepper sparks controversy in Uganda

The spread of the internet has opened Uganda to a vast array of trends and influences that would have had little effect in previous years. However, a good many citizens who have peered into this brave new world are not sure they like what they see — especially the two pornography sites featuring Ugandans that took the country by surprise recently.

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/ 19 May 2005

Growing pressure on prisons under strain

Nearly a decade ago, the Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa was drawn up to improve the situation of inmates across the continent. In an ironic twist, however, the capital that gave its name to the initiative has yet to meet the goals of the declaration. The same goes for the rest of Uganda. Prisons in the country are overcrowded and vermin-infested.

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/ 14 March 2005

Moving from top-down to bottom-up no easy process

Urban poverty has a familiar face — the image of the overcrowded and garbage-strewn slum. It may surprise many to hear, then, that three quarters of the world’s poorest people — about 900-million persons — live in rural areas. ”Not simply poverty, but extreme poverty is the normal experience of the majority of the rural population,” says the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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/ 17 November 2004

Stop that noise!

A promotions van drives by, its four loud speakers blaring news of a concert that is scheduled to take place over the weekend. At taxi ranks, hundreds of vehicles assemble to load passengers who are called to get on board. In the noisy St Balikudembe, Uganda’s biggest market, almost every vendor asks passersby in a sing-song voice to take something off the shelf. A car alarm goes off, then a second, and a third. Heard enough? Wait — there’s more…

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/ 26 October 2004

A rough passage for Lake Victoria

Lake Victoria has long been a name to conjure with. The world’s second-largest fresh water lake, it stretches out endlessly — rippled by the breeze that characteristically blows over the lake. Up to 30 million people live along Victoria’s 3 500-kilometre shoreline, which is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. But alarm bells are being sounded about the effect their activities are having on the lake.