What democracy and human rights activist get wrong

Utterly chilling pictures made the rounds on Twitter this week. A Ugandan, Eric Mwesigwa, with huge marks of burns to his chest. Despicable. He said he was tortured at the hands of Uganda’s state agents. 

This is not new, but every image of a badly battered Ugandan that comes to light is simply horrifying. Even regime supporters and apologists wonder how on earth citizens can be subjected to extreme physical torture more over on political than criminal grounds. Yet even the most high profile criminal suspect is constitutionally protected against any form of illegal punishment, let along physical brutality, until a court of law hands down an appropriate punishment.

Those who have followed our political landscape close enough know that torture and other forms of excessive physical force have been integral to the current rulership. In the face of widespread condemnations and outrage on Twitter, the army and defence spokesman, Brig Felix Kulayigye, issued a statement denying Mr Mwesigwa had been detained and tortured by the military or any other state agency. 

This is very standard: deny and deflect, then later turnaround with a cosmetic apology and a rather hollow promise of taking action against culprits along with a perfunctory assurance that the army or other state agencies do not condone torture! We have been here many times, for long. An unmistakable déjà vu. 

Increasingly, with every major story of rights violations and democratic subversion, there are predictable calls from activists for western governments, especially the United States, UK and European Union, to sever ties including cutting foreign aid to Museveni government. 

These calls for cutting aid come from local actors including sections of the political opposition, diaspora activists and foreign allies interested in the cause of human rights and democracy in Uganda.  This is hugely problematic. It is either sheer naiveté, a lack of historical context, failure to grasp the interplay of domestic political processes and global power dynamics or a combination of these and other factors. First, there is scarcely compelling historical evidence that cutting aid to an authoritarian government results in better respect for human rights and progress in democratic governance. Quite to the contrary. If you look at specific case studies, including Uganda, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Eritrea, authoritarian regimes tend to harden and get more brutal when confronted with external sanctions and opprobrium. 

With aid cuts and external pressure campaigns, an authoritarian regime will have the perfect basis to ignore outside criticism and scrutiny while finding alternative financing sources including turning to funders who don’t pretend to be interested in human rights and governance issues,  à la, China. 

Second, harkening back to aid when human rights violations come to light is a poor way of pressing for change. There is little analytic and empirical connection between being an aid recipient country and committing egregious rights violations. Countless countries are aid dependent while respecting rights and freedoms of citizens, and many countries not dependent on foreign aid handouts are notorious at human rights.  Activists make the arguments that repressive governments like Museveni’s use foreign aid for repression.

A rather weak argument, indeed. State agents in Museveni’s government do not need that much financial resources to commit heinous acts of torture. In fact individuals working in Uganda’s security and police agencies are very poorly remunerated!  But even if the US government stopped all its aid to Uganda, the system and culture of torture will most likely carry on because of the political purposes it serves and given the unaccountable modus operandi of the ruling regime. 

Also, today Museveni has a relatively rich menu of donor-options to turn to, especially if in need of beefing up the coercive arsenal. For an American policymaker, the outlook is not as simple as withdrawing aid, then the Ugandan government will see light and behave!

Third, and arguably most important, is the erroneous supposition that powerful countries that give aid do so driven by a sense of charity and for the sake of humanity. Not quite. Aid is a tool of foreign policy. It is not free lunch. 

For countries that are security conscious and deeply inclined to their national security interests, for example the US, UK and others, their aid regimes are informed by calculations about securing and keeping allies as against perceived or real adversaries.  For China, India, Russia and some European countries, aid disbursements buy current and future economic interests, diplomatic partnerships in international forums and other forms of strategic calculations that may not be immediately obvious. 

But when all is said, the crux of the matter is that ending the current deplorable human rights situation in Uganda, and moving the country in the direction of responsible, democratic and accountable government will not come from far removed pro-democracy campaigners and activists calling on their home governments to stop aid to Museveni. The change we need and deserve will come from the hard efforts and struggles of Ugandans.

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