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/ 20 September 2005
The Ugandan army is as guilty as the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in abusing civilians devastated by nearly two decades of conflict in northern Uganda, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report. ”Soldiers in Uganda’s national army have raped, beaten, arbitrarily detained and killed civilians in camps,” said HRW.
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/ 12 September 2005
The first direct contact in 11 years between peace mediators and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony could help end the 19-year rebellion in northern Uganda, a former mediator in Kampala said on Monday. Betty Bigombe said by telephone from the war-torn region that she has been talking to the elusive rebel leader for several weeks.
Uganda has appointed an international audit firm to oversee its anti-HIV/Aids programmes following the suspension of more than -million in assistance by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a senior official said on Wednesday.
An international press freedom watchdog on Tuesday decried a sedition charge brought against a Ugandan journalist for his comments about the death of Sudanese vice president and ex-rebel leader John Garang. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the charge against reporter Andrew Mwenda is a blow to the independent media in Uganda.
Hollywood star Forest Whitaker, who is playing Idi Amin in the screen version of the acclaimed novel The Last King of Scotland, says the late Ugandan dictator was no saint, but was not the monster that has been portrayed in the West. He says his research for the role in the film has changed his perception of Amin.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday threatened to close several local newspapers if they persist in publishing conspiracy theories about the death of Sudanese Vice President John Garang. At a memorial ceremony for the seven Ugandan crew who died with Garang, Museveni said such reports were a threat to regional security and that he would not tolerate them.
The outbreak of an atypical strain of cholera in Uganda has killed at least 56 people and made more than 2 000 others ill since March, the East African country’s health ministry said on Friday. The ministry had sent alerts to health-care facilities about the strain and is issuing public warnings to Ugandans.
Ugandans trickled into polling stations across the country on Thursday to vote in a landmark referendum on restoring multiparty democracy after nearly 20 years. Amid opposition boycott calls and apparent widespread apathy, observers believe voters will endorse Uganda’s most sweeping political reforms in a generation.
Far from the capital where the merits of democracy are debated in earnest, the impoverished residents of war-ravaged northern Uganda see little point in this week’s referendum on restoring multiparty politics. Caught in a conflict nearly as old as the 20-year-old ban on political pluralism which President Yoweri Museveni now wants to repeal via Thursday’s vote, Ugandans are more concerned with peace than politics.
Ugandans go to the polls this week to vote in a referendum on scrapping a nearly 20-year-old ban on multi-party politics billed by the government as a bold step toward democratisation. But the electoral reform has been decried by the opposition as an empty gesture intended to cement President Yoweri Museveni’s hold on power.
Terecina Ayo remembers the night rebel fighters attacked, hacking to death her 12-year-old nephew and 13-year-old niece, abducting other villagers and torching thatched huts. The widow says she survived that night four years ago by running into the bush. But she and many other survivors in northern Uganda are nonetheless scarred.
A Ugandan lawmaker said on Wednesday he would reward girls from his central constituency with university scholarships if they leave high school able to prove their virginity. Sulaiman Madada said the scheme aimed to promote morality and that successful scholarship applicants would have to submit to a gynaecological exam to demonstrate their chastity.
The Norwegian government has withdrawn aid totalling -million to Uganda, accusing Kampala of mishandling the political process, and failing to contain corruption and human rights abuses, the Norwegian ambassador said on Tuesday. A government spokesperson said the decision by Norway to cut aid ”is totally unjustified”
The Ugandan Parliament has overwhelmingly voted to amend the country’s Constitution to outlaw gay marriage and impose criminal penalties on same-sex couples who wed, a spokesperson for the legislature said on Thursday. The amendment says that ”marriage is lawful only if entered into between a man and a woman”.
The Ugandan army said on Tuesday that it had killed at least 19 rebels from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the past two days in various parts of the country’s war-ravaged northern area. Several of the fighters drowned while attempting to escape from military patrols by jumping into a river in Gulu district.
Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Friday rejected an appeal by death-row inmates to outlaw capital punishment, but ruled that laws requiring the imposition of the sentence are illegal and must be rewritten. More than 400 death-row inmates brought their unprecedented appeal to the Constitutional Court in January.
The Ugandan army said on Friday it has killed a senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander who attended the first-ever direct talks with the government last year, throwing new doubts into halting peace efforts. Mediators and local leaders have been trying to lure the rebels back to peace talks amid a surge in brutal LRA violence.
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.
South Africa’s MTN Group is committed to realising its growth road map in Africa despite hurdles associated with investing in the mobile telecommunications sector on the continent. MTN’s Ugandan operation, which currently boasts a 66% market share, will potentially face fierce competition when markets open up from July.
The number of elephants in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park rose by more than 1 000 in the past two to three years, partly because of animals fleeing poachers and civil war in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an official said on Monday.
Although the rebel movement fighting in Uganda’s north has fostered an aura of religious mysticism based on an apparent wish to recreate a state following the Biblical Ten Commandments, its grudge against the Ugandan government is rooted in deep-seated grievances that stem back for years.
The Ugandan military said on Thursday it had freed 110 abductees, most of them children, held by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and killed 50 of LRA fighters in the war-ravaged north of the country last month, said an army spokesperson in the northern town of Gulu, where the operations took place along with areas of Apac, Adjuman, Kitgum and Pader in the conflict-scarred north.
The policy shift towards ”abstinence-only programmes” to curb the spread of HIV/Aids could reverse significant gains made by Uganda in the fight against the pandemic, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has warned. In a new report, titled The Less They Know, the Better: Abstinence-Only HIV/Aids Programmes in Uganda, HRW said the government had removed critical Aids information from primary school curricula.
Uganda, considered a beacon in Africa for its Aids-beating policies, is adopting sexual abstinence-only programmes.
Bands of marauding baboons in eastern Uganda are forcing parents to keep their children at home to guard crops, causing rampant absenteeism in the region’s primary schools, officials said on Wednesday. More than 85% of children in Uganda’s Busia district are staying home from school due primarily to the menace of the baboons.
Rebels hacked to death six people in northern Uganda overnight as the army detained two opposition politicians for alleged collaboration with the insurgents, officials said on Thursday. The six adults and children were beaten and stabbed with machetes and hoes when the rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army assaulted three villages.
Reports. They gather dust on the desks of journalists and bureaucrats — after having been opened with reluctance, and closed with speed. Months of work may have gone into their production; but all too often, the only use for them seems to be as doorstops. The findings contained in reports are often disregarded by those who draw up social and economic policies.
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/ 22 February 2005
Peace talks between Ugandan authorities and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army will go on beyond the end this week of a unilateral government ceasefire, officials said on Tuesday. However, as the talks continue, Kampala will press ahead with military operations against the rebels, whose ranks the government maintains have been decimated.
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/ 18 February 2005
Ugandan authorities have banned the internationally acclaimed women’s rights play The Vagina Monologues as an affront to public morality and threatened to arrest organisers if they follow through on plans to stage benefit performances. Information Minister Nsaba Buturo said the play has been deemed offensive and vulgar.
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/ 17 February 2005
Fifty-two hippos have died of anthrax in a western Ugandan game park since the beginning of the year. The disease killed 250 in the same park in the second half of 2004, Deputy Tourism Minister Jovino Akaki Ayumu said on Thursday. Anthrax struck the park bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo last July.
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/ 16 February 2005
The Ugandan government is certain of military success against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) should the rebel group prove to be less serious about dialogue. ”Just in case they are not that serious, the UPDF [Uganda People’s Defence Force] will continue its offensive,” the minister told Parliament in a statement on Monday evening.
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/ 4 February 2005
The Ugandan government said on Thursday that it has decided to halt its military operations against Lord’s Resistance Army rebels for 18 days on condition that they confine themselves to a designated area in the north as efforts to revive peace talks continue. The truce will take effect on Friday morning.