Government urged to desist from normalising extrajudicial killings
Plain clothed security personnel patrol the streets of Kampala during the deadly November 18/19- 2020 riots. PHOTOS/STEPHEN OTAGE
What you need to know:
- Speaking at the launch of their report in Kampala, Mr James Nkuubi, one of the lead researchers at NETPIL said at one time the national debate degenerated into just numbers of the people who had been shot.
The researchers at the Network of Public Interest Lawyers (NETPIL) at the School of Law Makerere University have urged the government to desist from normalising extrajudicial killings.
These academics in their report dubbed “The 2021 General Elections in Uganda: Human Rights Violations and Spectacle of Violence” claim that they are not only looking at the right to live in the context of the previous elections but why Ugandans in particular the government is normalising losses of lives
Speaking at the launch of their report in Kampala, Mr James Nkuubi, one of the lead researchers at NETPIL said at one time the national debate degenerated into just numbers of the people who had been shot.
“We thought it is important to revisit this debate with a key inquiry into the normalisation of extra-judicial killings. We are also very interested in the growing deployment of military justice, as an arbiter of political contestation. So, we saw the military particularly the court-martial, coming in to pick particular known supporters of a certain individual and the cases have since stalled,” he said.
Mr Nkuubi said that Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) will argue that it is within its right, and that is what the law says. But as researchers, they think and they are opined in their findings that it is not an ideal way of dealing with contestations in politics.
“When government chooses to take those who do not agree with it into the trial just because there is an opportunistic law that is plausible, we feel that is a return of where we came from.”
Mr Nkuubi said that in their findings, it was discovered that most of the people who fall victims of rights violations, were from a particular cosmopolitan region and there were connotations of the façade that because its residents voted the way they did, they should be targeted.
According to Abbas Luyombo also a researcher, they conducted research on the state of the freedom of expression in Uganda, during the election period to find out whether the state had respected its mandate to protect and fulfill human rights and they realised that the virtual space was restricted.
“The people were not free to express their views as citizens. The people were in fear and there was self-censorship they could not express themselves freely as a result of the enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and oppression,” he said.
He said that they are looking at whether it is right to criminalise political discontent. They feel this matter should not be left out, but debated publically, adding that they think there is increasing digital authoritarianism through the shutdown of the internet among other things.
