Opposition figures say charges against Nicholas Opiyo, known for defending the rights of society’s most vulnerable, are baseless
Security agencies in Uganda have arrested a prominent human rights lawyer over alleged money laundering.
Nicholas Opiyo, known for representing LGBTQ+ people, was arrested in a restaurant in the capital, Kampala, on Tuesday by plainclothes security and financial intelligence officers.
Continue reading...African-led study expected to involve 1,600 people over next three years in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa
The first trial in Africa to test two new vaccines to protect against HIV got under way in Uganda this week, raising hopes of an end to the epidemic that affects millions of people across the continent.
The African-led PrEPVacc study will test two experimental combination vaccines to see if they can provide any protection against HIV in people most at risk of infection.
Continue reading...President Museveni promised much when he took power but, 34 years on, violence and poverty are rife
To survive as an opposition politician in Uganda, you have to hit the campaign trail wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet. You must be ready for war. Ugandan musician turned opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, discovered this when he decided to challenge incumbent Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s 34-year stranglehold on power at elections scheduled for 14 January. On the first day Kyagulanyi stepped out to campaign, he wore his vest over red overalls that made him look like a prisoner.
“I do not dress like this because I want to. I dress like this because there are people after my life. They think that by killing me, they will have it better. They do not know that if I die, it will only get worse,” he told the crowd outside his house.
Continue reading...Bhante Buddharakkhita, who became a Buddhist while studying in India, is on a mission to use mindfulness meditation to heal trauma
As the first Ugandan Buddhist monk, the most venerable Bhante Bhikkhu Buddharakkhita has ambitions to train 54 novices, one for every African nation.
“I’m teaching Theravada Buddhism with African flavour to ensure people understand the Lord Buddha and don’t see it as something weird, foreign and Asian,” he says.
Continue reading...Student tells how he and others were arrested on Covid-related charges, publicly humiliated and left without a place to stay
When you ask Ronald Ssenyonga, a 21-year-old Ugandan, to tell you about his arrest, he asks: “Which one?” Like many gay people struggling to survive in a country that has used Covid-19 as an excuse to clamp down on human rights, Ssenyonga is used to arrests and raids.
Even before the pandemic Uganda was labelled the worst place to be gay after its parliament proposed the death penalty for some homosexual acts. The constitutional court annulled the law in 2014, but security agencies continue to hound gay people – relying on information from community vigilantes to attack and smoke them out of places they thought were safe.
Continue reading...At least 19 people have been killed in Uganda over two days in the country’s worst unrest in a decade, as security forces try to quell protests triggered by the arrest of presidential candidate Bobi Wine. Known by supporters as ‘the ghetto president’, Wine is one of a new generation of politicians across Africa who are challenging longtime leaders, including President Yoweri Museveni who has ruled the east African nation for nearly 35 years
Security forces clash with supporters of Bobi Wine after he was held for breaching Covid-19 rules before rally
Security forces in Uganda have fought running battles with supporters of the popular Ugandan reggae singer and opposition presidential hopeful Bobi Wine after the 38-year-old was arrested for breaching Covid-19 regulations shortly before a rally.
Police arrested Wine, who is hoping to unseat Uganda’s long-time leader, Yoweri Museveni, in the eastern town of Luuka.
Continue reading...From naked protests to spells in prison, Stella Nyanzi has stood up to President Museveni – now she’s standing as an MP
“Stella is my Mama Africa, because she has always fought for women!” shouts Hanifa Nagujja, a 28-year-old cook at akatale kabalema or “market of the disabled” in the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
Nagujja is one of about 15 women in gingham aprons who are jumping in the air in elation, clapping, finger-clicking and ululating as Stella Nyanzi weaves her way through bubbling pots of groundnut sauce, beans and matooke. Some of them chant “Nnalongo! Nnalongo!” – the name given to mothers of twins in Buganda culture.
Continue reading...In an area that is infamous for high drug use, a group of men use their own experience of addiction to help children strive for new goals
It was as a child in 1983 that Mark Owori first began using drugs. He started by supplying them to his sister, Lucky, who was a soldier in Uganda’s bush war. Eventually he also became both involved in the war and an addict.
This was under the rule of Ugandan independence leader Milton Obote and during a conflict in which Owori says that everyone had a role – from spying to looking for food. His was to keep soldiers supplied with drugs.
Continue reading...Reggae star and presidential hopeful signature headgear is ‘symbol of resistance
Security forces in Uganda have raided the offices of Bobi Wine, the reggae star and prominent opposition leader, as tensions rise in the east African country months ahead of presidential elections in January.
Soldiers and police officers invaded the headquarters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) in Kamwokya, a suburb of Kampala, the capital, in the late morning on Wednesday. They seized cash, posters, banners and quantities of red berets – Wine’s signature headgear and a “symbol of resistance” which the government says is illegal.
Continue reading...Opposition leader says Yoweri Museveni behind campaign of intimidation to stop him standing
Bobi Wine, the popular reggae star and prominent opposition leader in Uganda, has accused the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, of seeking to block his candidature at next year’s elections through a series of “trumped up” legal challenges and a campaign of intimidation.
Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said he was calling on people all over the world to “keep their eyes” on Uganda because international attention was the only way to “stop human rights abuses and impunity in Uganda today”.
Continue reading...More than 90,000 face extreme hunger with another 400,000 hit by food crisis, says report
Nearly 500,000 refugees in Uganda are struggling to eat as a result of cuts to food aid and Covid-19 restrictions.
More than 91,000 people living in 13 refugee settlements around the country are experiencing extreme levels of hunger, according to the latest analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), published this week. More than 400,000 refugees are considered to be at crisis hunger levels.
Continue reading...The Ugandan-born writer, whose new book deals with her country’s origin stories, on feminism and the importance of home
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1967, and now lives in Manchester. Her first novel, Kintu, was longlisted for the Etisalat prize in 2014 and she won the Commonwealth Short Story prize in the same year. Her first short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019. She was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for fiction in 2018. Her new book, The First Woman, is a powerful feminist rendition of Ugandan origin tales, charting the young girl Kirabo’s journey to find her place in the world.
“How does it feel to have a mother?” is one of the questions at the core of the book.
I didn’t meet my mother until I was perhaps 10 and used to have to think about that question. As a child, I lived with my dad, but he was brutalised during Idi Amin’s regime and lost his mind, so I went to live with my aunt aged about 10. I wanted to explore the idea that if you don’t have a mother you create the idea of one yourself and turn her into a perfect goddess. When Kirabo meets her mother, she mourns the loss of the mother she had created. Those kind of losses I wanted to deal with.
Activists praise decision to reject energy ministry’s proposal to dam the world-famous waterfall
Conservationists in Uganda have hailed a bipartisan decision to reject the government’s plan to construct a hydro-power dam at the country’s biggest tourist attraction.
Lawmakers unanimously adopted a report by the 28 member parliamentary committee on environment on Thursday, rejecting the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development proposal to build a 360MW at Uhuru Falls on Murchison Falls national park.
Continue reading...Tensions between locals and South Sudanese refugees have left at least 10 dead as authorities act to prevent escalation
Uganda has sent security troops to its north-west region where tensions are on the rise following deadly attacks on refugees by local people.
More than 10 South Sudanese refugees were killed, including a teenage girl and a 25-year-old woman and her baby, and 19 others were seriously wounded in clashes at a water point in Madi-Okollo district last week.
Continue reading...NGOs reportedly failed to meet rules, but sweeping move could impact many of the country’s 1.4 million refugees activists warn
The Ugandan government has suspended operations of three-quarters of refugee aid organisations over non-compliance with operational rules.
The move affects 208 aid agencies, including 85 international groups. Hilary Onek, minister for relief, disaster preparedness and refugees, said some organisations had been operating in refugee settlements illegally, without government approval.
Continue reading...Ruling is result of lawsuit filed over deaths in childbirth of two women due to staff negligence and lack of facilities
Health rights activists in Uganda have welcomed a landmark court ruling that the government should increase its health budget to ensure women receive decent maternal healthcare services.
The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2011 over the deaths in childbirth of two women – Jennifer Anguko and Sylvia Nalubowa – in a public health facility.
Continue reading...Judgment follows Guardian investigation into case of boy who was adopted by American couple without parents’ knowledge
The US has imposed financial sanctions and visa restrictions on two Ugandan judges and two lawyers over their part in an international adoption scam involving more than 30 children.
Judges Moses Mukiibi and Wilson Musalu Musene, and lawyers Dorah Mirembe and Patrick Ecobu, facilitated a network organising adoptions of Ugandan children, according to the US State Department.
“Together, these individuals engaged in corruption to arrange the adoption of Ugandan children by unwitting parents in the United States,” the statement said.
Continue reading...If countries that use tourism to fund conservation are not supported, species and habitats will disappear
At London zoo, the giraffes, which are easily visible from the street, had regular visitors even during lockdown, and an illuminated NHS sign on their famous building. Like most other attractions that rely on tourists for income, zoos forced to shut owing to the coronavirus face a financially fraught future. But the risks to captive animals and their keepers are nothing to those faced by wild creatures and the people who guard them. Already under huge pressure from multiple sources, international conservation efforts have been thrown into fresh chaos.
The picture that is emerging of the global impact of Covid-19 on wildlife is complicated. Fishing hours were found by researchers to have fallen by 10% in March and April, for example, while South Africa reported a 53% drop in the number of rhinos killed by poachers, compared with the first six months of last year (from 316 in 2019, to 166). The sudden dramatic fall in air pollution and traffic (road, sea and air) brought rapid if short-lived benefits for many of the planet’s non-human inhabitants. In the UK, as in other countries, people who could afford to took the opportunity of the lockdown to spend more time in the countryside or their gardens. So far, it is a bumper year for British butterflies.
Continue reading...Six-year sentence following death of one of country’s best-known silverback mountain gorillas is first of its kind
In the first conviction of its kind, a court in Uganda has jailed a poacher for six years after he admitted killing one of the country’s best-known silverback mountain gorillas in a national park.
Felix Byamukama, from Murole in the south-west district of Kisoro, pleaded guilty to illegal entry into a protected area and killing the gorilla named Rakifi and a duiker antelope. Byamukama had said earlier that he killed the animal in self-defence after he was attacked. It is the first time Uganda, home to 50% of the world’s mountain gorillas, has jailed someone for such an offence and the sentence has been widely welcomed by wildlife groups.
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