Government cracks down on media in Uganda ahead of elections

By ISAAC KHISA
Published September 6, 2009

The Independent's 'controversial' cartoon spoofing Uganda's president.

In the lead-up to Uganda’s next general elections, there are fears the government is beginning a crackdown on independent media. Since the beginning of this year, journalists from several newspapers have been dragged to court on flimsy charges which observers say are deliberate acts of intimidation.

Early last month Daily Monitor’s journalists, including the managing editor Daniel Kalinaki and Sunday Monitor editor, Henry Ochieng’ were charged with forging President Yoweri Museveni’s letter which suggested among other things, ring-fencing elective positions in the oil-rich Bunyoro region to the indigenous Banyoro. The letter ignited national furore with critics saying it would trigger ethnic conflict in the country.

Last week three journalists from The Independent were summoned to Kiira Police Station for publishing President Museveni’s cartoon on his 2011 election plan. The publication of the cartoon prompted the Media Crimes Department of the CID to interrogate the publication’s managing editor Andrew Mwenda, editor Charles Bichachi and associate editor Joseph Were with the intention of charging them with sedition. Ten police officers pressured the trio over the motive and production of the cartoon spoofing Museveni’s controversial decision to reappoint members of the embattled electoral commission to supervise the 2011 general election.

In 2007, Daily Monitor editors, Joachim Buwembo, Robert Mukasa, Bernard Tabaire, and reporter Emmanuel Gyezaho challenged the now notorious Section 179 of the Penal Code Act after they were charged in connection with the articles they published alleging corruption in the offices of two senior government officials. A panel of five judges on Uganda’s Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed the petition this month, ruling that “it would trivialize and demean the magnificence of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution if individual members of the public are exposed to hatred, ridicule, and contempt without any protection.”

Meanwhile, Mukasa’s fellow editors at The Observer, James Tumusiime and Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda have been on police bond since 2006 on charges of “promoting sectarianism.” For now, their trial has been suspended pending a Supreme Court ruling on a challenge filed by Andrew Mwenda, a 2008 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee.

Other journalists under this wave of press suppression include Moses Akena, who was charged with sedition two weeks ago, and Mr Patrick Atim, charged with treason in June this year.

The continued harassment and extrajudicial detention continue to raise criticism from both local and global media bodies, with some expressing fears of the government intensifying repression in the lead-up to elections in 2011- the kind unleashed against critical journalists during the 2005 polls.

Following the interrogation of The Independent journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has called on the Ugandan government to drop the charges.

“The government has targeted Andrew Mwenda and others with sedition charges in the past as a way to retaliate for critical coverage. They are doing it again–but have even less basis now because the law is being reviewed,” CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Tom Rhodes, said.

In a memo the CPJ’s issued entitled; “Ugandan paper’s cartoon of president draws interrogation”, Mr Rhodes said the criminal prosecutions of independent journalists are on the rise against the backdrop of mounting national tensions and hostile presidential rhetoric toward the press.

Uganda’s Supreme Court is reviewing the constitutionality on the statute on sedition, and all prosecutions under the law have been suspended pending its ruling.

Since 2003, journalists in independent media houses in Uganda have been routinely harassed and are constantly in the courts fighting charges ranging from sedition to defamation.

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