By Vincent Mumo Nzilani, Alexander Winning and Bernadette Baum<\/p>\n
Kampala \u2014 Uganda\u2019s government has ordered two local rights groups to halt their work, days before Thursday\u2019s election, which the UN Human Rights Office says is taking place in an atmosphere of 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, aims 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 of state.<\/p>\n
He has changed the constitution twice to remove age and 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 condemn rights violations<\/p>\n
The two watchdogs told to stop their work, 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 journalists.<\/p>\n
In a letter to Chapter Four seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the state-run National Bureau for NGOs said it had received information the watchdog was involved in activities \u201cprejudicial\u201d to Uganda\u2019s security and \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 on the report.<\/p>\n
Rights group ordered to halt operations<\/p>\n
Robert Ssempala, who heads HRNJ-U, said he had received the same letter ordering his organisation to stop operating.<\/p>\n
Stephen Okello, head of the state NGO bureau, confirmed that he had written the letters.<\/p>\n
Last month, police raided the house of Sarah Bireete, an outspoken critic of rights violations and a frequent guest 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Vincent Mumo Nzilani, Alexander Winning and Bernadette Baum Kampala \u2014 Uganda\u2019s government has ordered two local rights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[13550,13731,5888,13726,153,13725,4672,13722,13723,13728,13724,13730,13727,13729,13721],"class_list":{"0":"post-22128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-human-rights-network-for-journalists-uganda","9":"tag-museveni-presidency","10":"tag-sarah-bireete","11":"tag-sarah-bireete-detention","12":"tag-uganda","13":"tag-uganda-constitutional-changes","14":"tag-uganda-election","15":"tag-uganda-election-violence","16":"tag-uganda-political-repression","17":"tag-uganda-voter-intimidation","18":"tag-ugandan-ngo-restrictions","19":"tag-ugandan-ngos-shutdown","20":"tag-ugandan-police-military-actions","21":"tag-un-human-rights-office-uganda","22":"tag-un-report-uganda-elections"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22128","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=22128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}