Category Archives: Uganda

Ugandan minister speaks from hospital bed after assassination attempt – video

Posted on by

Gunmen fired bullets at a car carrying Katumba Wamala in an attempted assassination on Tuesday, wounding the former army commander and killing his daughter and driver. Speaking from his hospital bed, the government minister said: 'I have survived … the bad guys have done it, but God has given me a second chance. I will pull through.'

There have been several unsolved assassinations and mysterious deaths of high-profile officials in the east African country in recent years that have fuelled speculation about perpetrators and their motivations


Continue reading...

Migrant guards in Qatar ‘still paid under £1 an hour’ ahead of World Cup

Posted on by

Promises of better working conditions ring hollow for tens of thousands of security guards, who say they still work long hours for low pay

Every day at 5pm, Samuel boards the company bus that takes him to his night shift as a guard at a luxury high-rise tower near Qatar’s capital, Doha. When his shift ends 12 hours later, he says he will have earned £9, just 75p an hour.

Samuel, who is from Uganda, says he almost never has a day off. “You have to tell lies, like ‘you are sick, you’re not feeling good’, so that you get a day off,” he says.

Continue reading...

Uganda police killings reconstructed using mobile phone footage

Posted on by

Interviews with more than 30 witnesses also used in investigation by BBC Africa Eye into deaths in Kampala

A single truck carrying eight police officers was responsible for a mass shooting in the centre of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in November last year in which at least four people died and many more were injured, an investigation by BBC Africa Eye has found.

The shootings were part of a crackdown on protests in Kampala following the arrest of opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, a singer turned politician known as Bobi Wine, who was campaigning as a candidate for presidential elections held two months later.

Continue reading...

‘I had to step up’: Child labour in poorest countries rose during Covid, says report

Posted on by

Study finds children in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda in dangerous, exploitative work, with long hours and little pay

Gopal Magar’s father has had a drinking problem for as long as he can remember, but when Kathmandu went into lockdown last spring, it got worse. With five members of his family confined to a small room in the south of the city, tempers frayed and the 14-year-old saw his father beat his mother again and again. One day Gopal could stand it no longer. He fought back, and then fled, leaving his parents, and his school, behind.

Gopal now lives with his older brother on the other side of the city, and has swapped his classroom for a construction site. “I have fewer problems now, but I need to work really hard,” he says. He starts work at six in the morning and for the next 12 hours hauls sand, loads bricks and mixes concrete. He earns about £7 a day and sends some of it to his mother to help her buy food and pay the rent.

Continue reading...

Campaigners lose court case to stop Ugandan forest clearance

Posted on by

Court ruling gives go-ahead for sugar plantation in Bugoma forest, home to endangered chimpanzees

Conservationists in Uganda have condemned as “shallow and absurd” a court ruling that authorised the government to allow swathes of a tropical forest to be cleared for a sugar-cane plantation.

Three environmental groups had taken the government to court over a decision to allow Hoima Sugar Ltd to build on 5,500 hectares (13,500 acres) in the Bugoma Forest Reserve.

Continue reading...

Welcome to Semuliki: on the trail of the ADF’s Islamist militants | photo essay

Posted on by

Photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has been embedded with Congolese soldiers in the DRC’s ‘triangle of death’. The elusive insurgents they are hunting have pledged allegiance to Islamic State

At the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, in a vast territory that ranges from the lofty Rwenzori mountains to the lush rainforest of the Semliki valley, one of the world’s most active militant groups is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians.

The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) was originally an opposition rebel group from Uganda rooted in a radical agenda of religious militancy. Taking advantage of the regional power vacuum, the group fled to Beni territory in neighbouring DRC to find shelter from the Ugandan army.

Continue reading...

Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

Posted on by

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

Continue reading...

Uganda passes bill criminalising same-sex relationships and sex work

Posted on by

The conservative African country insists it is ‘not yet ready’ for gay rights as campaigners say the flawed legislation sanctions rape

The Ugandan parliament has passed a controversial sexual offences bill which further criminalises same-sex relationships and sex work.

The laws were passed by MPs this week, reiterating sections of legislation first enforced in the country by British colonial rule. They condemn same-sex couples who perform acts deemed against the “order of nature” to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Continue reading...

‘Gamechanger’: Uganda launches drone delivering HIV drugs to remote islands

Posted on by

Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/Aids

As the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.

With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya.

Continue reading...

It’s a hard sell but Africa must invest in art and imagination

Posted on by

Building an arts centre in Uganda, in a pandemic, was never going to be easy but it’s crucial to our post-Covid future

I’ve been raising funds for a building project: not a hospital, not a school, but an arts centre.

It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.

Continue reading...

Ugandan president’s son named in ICC complaint over abductions and abuse

Posted on by

Muhoozi Kainerugaba leads Special Forces Command, an elite military unit blamed for widespread abuses

  • Warning: graphic information in this report may upset some readers

Lawyers acting for the victims of a wave of abductions and torture by security forces in Uganda have named senior military commanders, including the president’s son, in a complaint to the international criminal court.

Prosecutors at the ICC are already reviewing an earlier submission from the opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, the former reggae singer known as Bobi Wine, describing widespread human rights abuses before presidential polls held in January.

Continue reading...

‘I am not my trauma’: survivors of sexual abuse at a Ugandan girls’ shelter – photo essay

Posted on by

German national Bernhard ‘Bery’ Glaser took advantage of his ‘rich white foreigner’ status to systematically abuse girls in his care. Photographer DeLovie Kwagala captured the stories of 15 women

Eve was just eight years old and recently orphaned when she was taken to live at a girls’ shelter on Bugala island, in the Ugandan sector of Lake Victoria.

Bery’s Place had been set up in 2006 by Bernhard “Bery” Glaser, a German national living in Uganda, as a refuge for traumatised children and victims of sexual violence. Yet Eve and other girls living there at the time say that Glaser was hiding a dark secret. Taking advantage of his “rich white foreigner” status to entice parents to leave their daughters at the home, Glaser was using Bery’s Place as a cover for routine and systematic sexual and emotional abuse of the children in his care, the girls allege.

Continue reading...

‘It was a torture chamber’: Ugandans abducted in vicious crackdown

Posted on by

Exclusive: victims and relatives describe suffering as repression intensifies under Yoweri Museveni

Hundreds of ordinary people suspected of supporting opposition politicians in Uganda have been snatched off the streets by security services in the worst wave of repression in the east African country for decades.

Many suffered systematic torture, detention in harsh conditions in often secret prisons and the denial of access to relatives or lawyers. The abductions, which were described in detail to the Guardian by survivors and relatives of victims, have led the UK and the US to express concern through diplomatic channels.

Continue reading...

‘We cannot drink oil’: campaigners condemn east African pipeline

Posted on by

Activists say the ‘heart of Africa’ line shipping crude from Uganda to Tanzania is unnecessary and poses a huge environmental risk

Activists have accused French and Chinese oil firms of ignoring huge environmental risks after the signing of accords on the controversial construction of a £2.5bn oil pipeline.

Uganda, Tanzania and the oil companies Total and CNOOC signed three key agreements on Sunday that pave the way for construction to start on the planned east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP). But on Tuesday a letter signed by 38 civil society organisations across both east African countries said the parties had failed to address environmental concerns over the pipeline and had steamrollered over court and parliamentary processes.

Continue reading...

‘I miss school’: 800m children still not fully back in classes

Posted on by

Rights groups warn that children across the world are being pushed into abusive situations, from early marriage to child labour

Across the world 800 million children are still not fully back in school, Unicef is warning, with many at risk of never returning to the classroom the longer closures go on. There are at least 90 countries where schools are either closed or offering a mix of remote and in-person learning.

The UN agency’s chief of education, Robert Jenkins, told the Guardian that the closures are part of “unimaginable” disruption to children’s education.

Continue reading...

‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

Posted on by

Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins by the end of more than a decade of war in northern Uganda.

Now, just outside Ojok Okello’s living-room door, final-year pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily breaking for recess and a market is clattering into life, as is the local craft brewery, as what has become Okere City begins a new day.

Continue reading...

Pro-choice protests in Warsaw and Myanmar coup: 20 photos on human rights this week

Posted on by

A roundup of the best photography on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Algeria to Uganda

Continue reading...

As a poor Ugandan farmer, white and black people ignore my advice on poverty

Posted on by

The mostly white development sector only funds efforts led by more ‘legitimate’ people. We need support from the diaspora

Being poor, black and from sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest thing you can ever be. But that is what I am.

Before Covid-19 came, extreme poverty had largely become a problem of only one part of the world – sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Bank in 2018, the region was projected to host more than 90% of the world’s extreme poor by 2030.

Continue reading...

Uganda opposition leader Bobi Wine calls on court to nullify election result

Posted on by

Party lawyer accuses re-elected president Yoweri Museveni of being an ‘agent of violence’

The Ugandan opposition leader and presidential challenger Bobi Wine has filed a petition at the country’s highest court to challenge the re-election of Yoweri Museveni in last month’s polls.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, wants the supreme court in the capital, Kampala, to nullify the victory of Museveni in the 14 January poll.

Continue reading...

Ugandan security forces withdraw from Bobi Wine’s house

Posted on by

Judge ruled on Monday that house arrest of presidential challenger was illegal

Security forces in Uganda have withdrawn from around the home of presidential challenger Bobi Wine, complying with a ruling by a judge on Monday that rebuked authorities for holding the candidate under house arrest for 11 days.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, has been unable to leave his home since 14 January, when Ugandans voted in an election in which the 38-year-old reggae star turned politician was the main challenger to 76-year-old Yoweri Museveni.

Continue reading...