Somewhere in Gulu City, 16-year-old Leon Joshua Otim succumbed to injuries he sustained after being attacked by criminal gangs at Awere Sports Ground in Bar-Dege-Layibi Division in Gulu City last week.
Otim was attending a campaign rally for the National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, when he was hit on the head with a blunt object.
This came a few days after 33-year-old Meshach Okello was shot dead on November 28 as Bobi Wine left Iganga District, where he had just finished addressing a campaign rally at the Railway Grounds.
These violate Articles 3 and 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantee liberty, security, freedom, equality, dignity, and rights to all people.
Music producer and Bobi Wine supporter Daniel Brenny Oyerwot, commonly known as Sir Dan Magic, was left nursing head injuries at the Gulu incident.
Mid this year, Edward Ssebuwufu, also known as Eddy Mutwe, a long-time civilian bodyguard of Bobi Wine, was abducted and tortured in the infamous ‘basement’ incident before being produced in court days later.
These atrocious human denigrating acts are patterns of gross, cruel mistreatment, and torture which violate Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Catholic priest, Fr Deusdedit Ssekabira, and political activist Sam Mugumya are part of the statistics of the rampant enforced disappearances.
Amid all these violations, institutions mandated with enforcing human rights standards seem not to be doing enough.
To my dismay, Ms Mariam Wangadya, the chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), was recently quoted as acknowledging that they might not be doing enough when it comes to strongly condemning atrocities committed by security forces against civilians.
‘We don’t go deep enough the way we do when condemning acts of violence against civilians. I must confess that this is out of fear,’ she said, according to The Observer, at a joint press briefing at the UHRC headquarters ahead of this year’s International Human Rights Day commemorations.
It’s now close to three years since the Government of Uganda terminated the operations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), forcing the agency to leave the country.
However, OHCHR has cautioned Uganda to observe and protect human rights for all.
On December 3, OHRC executive director Volk Turk deplored the escalating human rights violations and crackdown on the freedom and rights to dissent at a time the country is preparing for presidential and parliamentary polls on January 15.
‘It is deeply regrettable that election campaigns have once again been marked by widespread arbitrary arrests, detentions and use of unnecessary arrests or disproportionate force against the Opposition, as well as undue restriction of press freedom,’ Mr Turk said in a statement.
The hundreds of victims of these human rights violations were exercising their right to dissent as enshrined in the 1995 Constitution under Articles 29 and 38.
Article 29 guarantees the freedom of conscience, expression and assembly under a registered political party or association, while Article 38 protects citizens’ right to participate in all government affairs as a cardinal principle of any democracy.
The continued crackdown of dissenting voices and Opposition not only violates the Constitution, but the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Good Governance.
Failure to fulfil these international commitments and resolutions attracts the world’s human rights bodies. This is not foreign interference but rather holding a member state accountable to shared common values and principles.
I welcome Mr Turk’s remarks but also implore Ugandan human rights institutions to do their work. Security agencies must hold accountable those officers found violating the law, and victims must be compensated.