amnesty hails uganda on rights

By Geresom Musamali (Source: NewVision)

July 7, 2006: Amnesty International (AI) has commended Uganda for creating an environment in which human rights defenders (HDRs) are able to pursue their activities without hindrance.

HRDs are lawyers, journalists and other human rights activists who are at great risk because they expose cases of human rights violation in their countries and globally.

AI, however, said in a report published recently that there were still a few cases where HRDs in Uganda were oppressed. The report named Kenya and Tanzania among the other Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa countries where relative freedom exists. It said in Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan HRDs are constantly harassed.

“In Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (except for Zanzibar) HRDs have generally been able to pursue their activities openly and freely most of the time, though not always gaining redress for the abuses or receiving much government co-operation or wide community support,” said AI in the report.

AI named sensitive issues such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, media freedom and the war in the north as examples of where Uganda HRDs do not get the desired redress or government co-operation.

The report was compiled at an HRDs conference at Botanical beach Hotel in Entebbe from October 30 to November 4 last year. It was organised by AI and the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defender Project with 43 HRDs from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The report contains testimonies of HRDs that were arrested in Ethiopia, kidnapped and threatened with death in Somalia, forced into female genital mutilation in Kenya and a lesbian who was persecuted in Uganda.