Rwanda and Burundi officially joined the East African Community (EAC) on Monday, signing accession treaties that will expand the regional economic bloc to five nations and boost trade. Officials said their entry into the EAC, alongside Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, would be effective from July 1.
Nine years ago, Santonino Otok fled his home in the green fields of northern Uganda for a refugee camp, fearing attack by marauding rebels. Now he is back under his old mango tree. ”My parents are buried here and my parents’ parents, so it’s a blessing to return,” said a beaming Otok (66), surveying the birthplace he thought he might never see again.
Government plans to convert thousands of hectares of rainforest on an island on Uganda’s Lake Victoria into a palm-oil plantation have been shelved, officials said on on Saturday. The environment minister said the Kenyan company that applied for the licence backed off, fearing negative publicity about the project.
Poking out of northern Uganda’s tangled bush and tall elephant grass, a crucifix of two welded metal poles painted white marks a mass grave. On the stone slab below it, an epitaph in the local Acholi language: ”Here lie 28 people who were killed on August 19th 1986.” It does not say how.
Pasca Lakob doesn’t see much point in punishing the Ugandan guerrilla leader whose fighters murdered many of her family and friends. ”His atrocities are so evil, there’s no punishment that could fit the crime. They might as well pardon him,” she said of Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.
Young Ugandans living with HIV prefer to date partners who are not HIV-positive. This was revealed in a study among adolescents.
Some members of the Asian community in Uganda’s capital kept their children home from school, failed to report to work and left their shops shuttered on Friday, a day after a protest ignited racial violence. The demonstration in Kampala on Thursday was against a company’s plans to cut part of a prized rainforest.
Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Thursday scrapped a law against adultery because it found it discriminated against women, in a victory for female activists after a year-long battle. In the same ruling, the court also voided parts of succession law that gave more rights to men on the death of their wives than to widows.
At a rally denouncing a government raid on Uganda’s High Court, a lawyer beaten by security men during the invasion held aloft his bloodstained shirt as colleagues shook their heads in disgust and anger. Kiyimba Mutale suffered head wounds during an hours-long siege at the court on March 1 aimed at re-arresting bailed treason suspects.
The Ugandan government has approved the clearance of thousands of hectares of protected rainforest for a sugar plantation, a state newspaper said on Wednesday. The government is set to seek Parliament’s permission to clear about 7 000ha of 30 000ha in Mabira Forest Reserve, east of Kampala.
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels said on Friday they would return to peace talks in south Sudan if the government there increased security to keep the Ugandan army from attacking them. The rebels quit talks with Uganda in the south Sudanese capital, Juba, in January, denting hopes for an end to two decades of bloodshed in northern Uganda.
Stalled peace talks to end a brutal 20-year insurgency by the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army are to resume, government officials said on Tuesday. ”Both parties have agreed to resume talks,” Ruhakana Rugunda, head of the government negotiating team and Minister of Internal Affairs, told journalists.
Scientists have called for the international community take more interest in sleeping sickness, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website. They warn that drugs currently used to treat the disease are old and toxic, adding that sleeping sickness warrants a higher research priority because of its threat to health.
Ugandan government troops on Thursday scouted the volatile north of the country after the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army refused to renew a ceasefire that ran out at midnight local time. ”The situation is calm, we have not heard of any incident,” said army spokesperson Lieutenant Chris Magezi.
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/ 28 February 2007
The Ugandan government and northern rebels on Wednesday traded barbs ahead of a midnight truce expiry, raising fears of fresh clashes that could wipe out a stalled peace process to end two decades of war. The rebel Lord’s Resistance Army vowed not to renew the truce and to counter any army raids.
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/ 28 February 2007
Lord’s Resistance Army rebels will not renew a truce with the Ugandan government set to expire on Wednesday, raising fears of a new chapter in the brutal 20-year war in northern Uganda. They have refused to resume talks unless another venue outside Sudan is found, a request Kampala rejects as a time-wasting tactic.
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/ 27 February 2007
More than half the children in refugee camps in Africa’s troubled Great Lakes region have been victims of some form of sexual abuse, a report by aid agency World Vision said on Monday. Some of them are forced to have sex just to get food because conditions in the camps are so wretched, the charity said.
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/ 23 February 2007
The Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Friday said it would not renew a truce with the government due to expire next week in a blow to a stalled peace process aimed at ending two decades of war. LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti blamed Kampala for violating the truce that was the only significant achievement of peace talks that began last July.
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/ 22 February 2007
Just days before Hollywood’s elite gathers for this year’s Oscars, Ugandans hailed best actor nominee Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin — though were quick to frown on the sympathetic portrait of the former dictator. Whitaker is seen by many as the front-runner for the best actor Oscar for his role in The Last King of Scotland.
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/ 19 February 2007
An earthquake with a magnitude of 5,7 struck the Lake Albert region of western Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday, officials said, but there was no immediate word of casualties or damage. ”An earthquake passed here but it did not hurt anyone or destroy any property,” Andrew Diboi, police chief for western Uganda, told Reuters by telephone.
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/ 14 February 2007
Drought cycles are coming more often to north-eastern Uganda: every two years instead of every five. Residents could cope, if it wasn’t for the bandits. Lina Lomongin used to have 10 cows to her name and could feed herself and her four children on their milk and blood.
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/ 6 February 2007
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels will resume an offensive against the government unless Kampala agrees to move faltering peace talks to a new venue outside south Sudan. The Ugandan rebels have said they would not return to talks in Juba after Sudan’s president vowed to ”get rid of the LRA from Sudan”.
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/ 4 February 2007
Alice Lakwena, a Ugandan warrior priestess who led an ill-fated insurgency to topple President Yoweri Museveni in the 1980s, was laid to rest on Saturday at a funeral attended by several hundred followers. An enigmatic leader, Lakwena inspired her poorly equipped troops with claims that spirits spoke through her.
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/ 19 January 2007
Uganda’s ruling party has approved a plan to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia, officials said on Friday, making the deployment almost certain to go ahead. President Yoweri Museveni has pledged 1Â 000 troops to a proposed 8Â 000-strong peacekeeping force under a United Nations-approved plan.
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/ 17 January 2007
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have rejected south Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar as chief mediator at talks to end one of Africa’s longest wars. LRA second-in-command Vincent Otti said the rebels would permanently abandon talks with Uganda’s government in Juba if an alternative venue cannot be found.
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/ 15 January 2007
Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said on Monday they want to leave assembly areas in south Sudan agreed under a truce and head back to Uganda in a move the army warned would restart the country’s 20-year war. ”We are unwelcome in Sudan so [we] have to go back to Uganda,” LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny said.
Improved security in war-ravaged northern Uganda following peace talks between the government and rebels allowed 230Â 000 internal refugees to go home in 2006, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday. Talks are set to resume in south Sudan this month after the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels agreed to extend a landmark ceasefire with the government in December.
Uganda is unwilling to contribute to a peacekeeping mission for Somalia unless its mission and an exit strategy are clearly defined, a government official said on Tuesday. After routing rival Islamist leaders from their Mogadishu stronghold with military backing from Ethiopia, Somalia’s interim government now faces the huge task of trying to secure the gun-infested capital.
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/ 27 November 2006
Standard Bank on Monday floated 20% of shares in its Ugandan affiliate in the country’s largest initial public offering to private investors. Spokesperson Daniel Nsibambi said 1,02-billion shares in Stanbic Ugandan were being offered on the Uganda Securities Exchange in a move expected to raise 71-billion Ugandan shillings (R278-million).
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/ 22 November 2006
Destruction of wetlands around Lake Victoria, a source of drinking water to millions, is fast removing a buffer that stops it being poisoned by sewage and industrial waste, a Ugandan wetlands expert said on Wednesday. ”The worst case scenario is the lake is going to die, even with its huge size,” said Paul Mafabi, head of the government’s wetlands programme.
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/ 16 November 2006
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 November 2006
United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland appealed to Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on Tuesday not to let a fragile peace process fail and to end civilian suffering caused by 20 years of war. Both sides signed a new truce this month, raising hopes for an end to the brutal war in northern Uganda that has killed tens of thousands.