KAMPALA, Jan 13 (Reuters) \u2013 Uganda\u2019s government has ordered two local rights groups to halt their work days before Thursday\u2019s election, which the United Nations Human Rights Office says is taking place in an atmosphere \u200dof repression and intimidation.<\/p>\n
The authorities have detained hundreds of opposition supporters, the UN agency had said in a report in November, ahead of the January 15 election in which President Yoweri Museveni, 81, is looking to extend his four-decade rule.<\/p>\n
Museveni, who came to power in 1986 after leading a five-year rebellion, is Africa\u2019s third-longest ruling head \u200cof state.<\/p>\n
He has changed the constitution twice to remove age \u200cand term limits, and his dominance of Ugandan institutions means there is little prospect of an election upset in the East African country of 46 million, political analysts say.<\/p>\n
WATCHDOGS HAVE SPOKEN OUT ABOUT RIGHTS VIOLATIONS<\/p>\n
The two watchdogs told to stop their \u200bwork, Chapter Four Uganda and Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda (HRNJ-U), have denounced rights violations including the alleged arbitrary detention and torture of opposition supporters and \u200djournalists.<\/p>\n
The state-run National Bureau for NGOs, in a \u200bletter to Chapter Four seen by Reuters on Tuesday, said \u200bit had received information the watchdog was involved in activities \u201cprejudicial\u201d to Uganda\u2019s security \u200dand \u201cshould cease operations \u2026 with immediate effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN Human Rights Office said in a report on Friday that the police and military had used live ammunition to disperse peaceful rallies, conducted arbitrary detentions and abducted opposition supporters ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n
A Ugandan government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment \u200don the report.<\/p>\n
STATE NGO TOLD RIGHTS GROUPS TO HALT OPERATIONS<\/p>\n
Robert Ssempala, who heads HRNJ-U, told Reuters he had received the same letter ordering his organisation to stop \u200doperating.<\/p>\n
Stephen Okello, head of the \u200dstate NGO bureau, confirmed to Reuters that he had \u200bwritten the letters.<\/p>\n
Last month, police raided the house of \u200bSarah Bireete, \u2060an outspoken critic of rights violations and a frequent \u200cguest on local political talk shows and radio stations, and detained her.<\/p>\n
She was charged with offences related to unlawful disclosure of voter information. She denied the charges and remains in jail.<\/p>\n
The government has defended the security forces\u2019 actions as a justified response to what it called lawless conduct by opposition supporters.<\/p>\n
(Editing by Vincent Mumo Nzilani, Alexander \u2060Winning and Bernadette Baum)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KAMPALA, Jan 13 (Reuters) \u2013 Uganda\u2019s government has ordered two local rights groups to halt their work days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[153],"class_list":{"0":"post-21715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-uganda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}