The Uganda Police, UPDF and other security forces are guilty of
massive human rights violations, a new human rights report for 2011
released by the US State Department says.
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, commonly known as Human
Rights Reports, covers the status of human rights in countries around
the world by aligning them with the principles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
The report, released last Thursday, explicitly expresses the US’
concern about increasing cases of human rights violations and limited
freedoms in Uganda. It particularly faults security organs for using
excessive force and live ammunition in dispersing anti-government
demonstrations that rocked the country in 2011.
This, the report notes, resulted in at least 10 deaths between April
and May 2011. Although authorities arrested reserve police officer, Paul
Mugenyi, for the April 20 killing of a two-year-old girl in Masaka, the
report notes that no-one was held accountable for the other nine
deaths.
Previously, international rights groups like Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International accused security forces of being high-handed. But
the police force has often argued that it applies proportionate force.
The report nevertheless revisits many flash points that give the police a
bad countenance, including a 16-year-old girl in Kabale district who
tragically lost her life on April 11, 2011 after police used live
ammunition to disperse a strike at a secondary school.
Police later arrested two of their own officers, Aggrey Arinaitwe and
James Babaranda, for the student’s death. Arinaitwe was, however,
released for lack of evidence, while charges against Babaranda and
Mugenyi, in the Masaka incident, also seem to be hanging by a thread.
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