Uganda on Wednesday set a July deadline for the leader of the notorious rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to end a nearly two-decade insurgency and agree to peace talks or face military destruction. President Yoweri Museveni said his government would assure the safety of LRA supremo Joseph Kony and four lieutenants indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Lawmakers in Uganda’s first multi-party Parliament in two decades took their oaths of office on Tuesday after being elected in February following the repeal of a ban on political pluralism. Members of the 308-seat legislature from five parties pledged to "uphold, preserve and defend the Constitution" as well as give "faithful service to Parliament".
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took his third oath of office on Friday, formally extending his 21-year rule in an inauguration ceremony held amid concerns about his commitment to democracy. Museveni, who first came to power in a 1986 coup but has been elected three times since, enters his third term facing a series of weighty challenges.
Wildlife authorities said on Wednesday they had been forced to euthanise ”Big Mama”, a giant 52-year-old Nile crocodile that had been a star attraction at a Ugandan zoo for nearly half a century. Keepers at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre in Entebbe, south of the capital, put down the ailing reptile at the weekend.
In a bizarre twist to the treason trial of Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye, the defence on Wednesday accused the government of coaching the lead prosecution witness with a hidden radio set. Defence lawyer Caleb Alaka stunned a packed courtroom by claiming that the testimony of the witness, Jennifer Aryemo, was being directed by unidentified government agents through an earpiece concealed in an elaborate disguise.
A seemingly minor affair involving a Rwandan diplomat and the wife of a Ugandan businessman has reignited tensions between the feuding neighbours with the Rwandan government expelling a Ugandan diplomat and accusing Kampala of harbouring Rwandan dissidents.
Longstanding rivalry between Rwanda and Uganda took a new twist on Monday after Ugandan security forces photographed and arrested a Rwandan diplomat naked in bed with the wife of a Ugandan businessman. The incident involves John Ngarambe, the first secretary at Rwanda’s embassy in Kampala, who was detained along with the woman late on Saturday at an upscale hotel near Lake Victoria.
At least 13 children were killed and several injured when a fire razed the dormitory of a school in western Uganda, police said on Friday. The overnight Thursday blaze is suspected to have started after candle flames caught bedsheets and then spread throughout the dormitory of the Islamic Kabarole East Primary School.
The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged Northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq, and the East African country’s 20-year insurgency has cost ,7-billion, according to a report released on Thursday. There are now about 146 deaths a week among Northern Uganda’s estimated population of five million, or 0,17 violent deaths per 10Â 000 people per day.
The Ugandan authorities have shut down a radio station that allegedly aired a talk show critical of the country’s military and ruling party, media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Wednesday. The New York-based CPJ said police shut Choice FM based in the northern town of Gulu on Monday after it aired the show in which an opposition politician criticised local civilian and military authorities for alleged corruption.
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/ 26 February 2006
President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday won re-election in Uganda’s first multiparty polls since 1980, but his main rival rejected the results as opposition supporters clashed with police. Museveni was declared the overwhelming victor in Thursday’s landmark polls with nearly 60% of the vote.
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/ 25 February 2006
Uganda’s private Monitor Group media company complained on Saturday that its website and radio station are being jammed to prevent the independent release of partial results from this week’s elections. The firm said it was warned by Ugandan authorities to stop compiling and issuing returns from the country’s multiparty polls.
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/ 23 February 2006
Ugandans flooded polling stations on Thursday to cast ballots in landmark elections dominated by a bitter battle between President Yoweri Museveni and opposition leader Kizza Besigye. Hundreds queued patiently, and not so patiently, in huge lines at many of the nearly 20 000 open-air voting centres organised for the nation’s first multi-party elections in 26 years.
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/ 22 February 2006
President Yoweri Museveni has warned Ugandans not to be influenced by foreign meddlers, in a speech that closed an election campaign criticised by human rights groups for government harassment of the opposition. Opinion polls suggest Museveni could have difficulty capturing a majority in Thursday’s vote.
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/ 21 February 2006
A Ugandan court on Tuesday charged a member of the country’s security forces with murder in the shooting deaths last week of two opposition supporters at a rally site. The election campaign has been punctuated by sporadic violence and opposition claims of rampant state intimidation are shared by human rights groups.
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/ 20 February 2006
Uganda’s riot police fired tear gas and a water cannon at opposition supporters gathering on Monday at the final pre-election rally for presidential candidate Kizza Besigye. About 2Â 000 supporters had gathered in central Kampala, with riot police standing by. Young men in the crowd taunted the police, who responded with tear gas.
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/ 13 February 2006
Unknown gunmen fired on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s motorcade in a weekend attack in the country’s restive north-east, but no one was hurt, officials said on Monday. The attack, which appeared to be an act of banditry and not an assassination attempt, occurred late on Saturday in Uganda’s Karamoja region.
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/ 10 February 2006
Uganda’s West Nile has become one of several hotly contested regions in the country’s presidential campaign. In a bid to woo West Nile voters, who traditionally favour opposition candidates, President Yoweri Museveni announced a new hydroelectric power plant on the Nile to serve the region.
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/ 27 January 2006
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni marks two decades in power this weekend, less than a month before elections seen as a key test of his once-sterling but now tarnished democratic credentials. Since winning the respect and admiration of the West with enlightened economic and social policies, he has now run afoul of democracy advocates with increasing intolerance of dissent.
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/ 26 January 2006
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Thursday that he was ready to move his troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to fight Ugandan rebels. Museveni said he had asked the DRC government and the UN peacekeeping force to allow him to send troops to fight guerillas of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in the DRC.
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/ 20 January 2006
Two thousand heavily armed Sudanese tribesmen have driven 65 000 heads of livestock across the border into a wildlife reserve in Uganda in search of water and pasture for their herds, in a bid to survive the searing drought gripping East Africa, Ugandan officials said Friday.
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/ 16 January 2006
A judge sentenced a Rwandan rebel on Monday to 15 years in jail, a week after convicting him for killing eight tourists from the United States, Britain and New Zealand and a Ugandan tour guide who were on a gorilla-watching trip in 1999. High Court Judge John Bosco Katutsi passed the sentence after Jean-Paul Bizimana, alias Xavier Van Dame, appealed for lenient punishment.
Uganda’s main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, was released on bail and greeted about 12 000 cheering supporters outside the courthouse where he is on trial on charges he says were fabricated to keep him out of next month’s presidential election.
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/ 28 December 2005
Ground troops and a helicopter gunship attacked a group of at least 35 rebel fighters in northern Uganda, killing 20 insurgents, an army spokesperson said on Wednesday. Three other rebels were captured and the rest fled into the bush following the Tuesday evening attack, said Lieutenant Chris Magezi.
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/ 19 December 2005
Uganda’s detained opposition leader was expected to appear before a military tribunal and a civilian court on Monday for the start of two trials on charges that could result in a death sentence. But Kizza Besigye’s lawyers said they would not join him at the military court because Uganda’s High Court has ordered it to suspend the proceeding.
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/ 12 December 2005
A Ugandan court on Monday refused for a third time to release detained opposition leader Kizza Besigye, as a judge set a trial date for next week for him to face treason and rape charges. Besigye, seen as President Yoweri Museveni’s top rival in elections set for March, has remained in prison since mid-November.
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/ 30 November 2005
The deputy chief of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) said on Wednesday the rebels are ready to talk peace, breaking the group’s penchant for secrecy and drawing a cautious response from the goverment. Vincent Otti, the number two of elusive LRA supremo Joseph Kony, said his boss had authorised him to make the call for a negotiated end to the brutal nearly 20-year war.
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/ 16 November 2005
Police blocked roads leading to court on Wednesday as crowds gathered ahead of a bail hearing for a top opposition leader charged with treason. A day earlier, at least one person was shot dead in rioting by Kizza Besigye supporters protesting his prosecution on charges of treason as well as concealment of treason and rape.
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/ 16 November 2005
Ugandan police and troops firing live and plastic bullets fought running battles with protesters angered by the arrest on treason charges of the president’s main political rival. Kizza Besigye appeared in court on Tuesday, a day after his arrest. Elsewhere in Kampala, his supporters ransacked businesses and burned tyres.
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/ 15 November 2005
Ugandan police have arrested a major opposition leader and charged him with treason, saying for the first time they suspect him of links to the notorious rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. The arrest on Monday touched off protests that police put down with tear gas, rubber bullets and a water cannon.
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/ 21 October 2005
Thousands of government officials, diplomats, supporters and relatives gathered on Friday for the state funeral of Milton Obote, whose presidency was a brutal chapter in Uganda’s troubled history. The state funeral was held a day after current President Yoweri Museveni laid a wreath on the casket of his former foe.
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/ 21 October 2005
The threat posed by biological weapons such as anthrax must be taken seriously by both African governments and African scientists, warned a meeting of international experts in Kampala in Uganda this month. Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park recently recovered from an outbreak of anthrax among wildlife there.