Tag Archives: Uganda

World Bank suspends funding for Uganda over harsh anti-LGBT law

Uganda President

Important Takeaways:

  • Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on Thursday denounced the World Bank’s decision to suspend new funding in response to a harsh anti-LGBTQ law and vowed to find alternative sources of credit.
  • The World Bank said on Tuesday that the law, which imposes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts, contradicted its values and that it would pause new funding until it could test measures to prevent discrimination in projects it finances.
  • The anti-LGBTQ law, enacted in May, has drawn widespread criticism from local and international rights organizations and Western governments, though it is popular domestically.
  • “It is, therefore, unfortunate that the World Bank and other actors dare to want to coerce us into abandoning our faith, culture, principles and sovereignty, using money.
  • In June, the United States imposed visa restrictions on some Ugandan officials in response to the law. President Joe Biden also ordered a review of U.S. aid to Uganda.

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Triple suicide bombing kills three, wounds dozens in Ugandan capital

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) -A triple suicide bombing killed at least three people in the heart of Uganda’s capital on Tuesday, sending members of parliament and others rushing for cover as cars burst into flames in the latest in a wave of bomb attacks.

The blasts in Kampala shocked a nation that is known as a bulwark against violent Islamist militants in East Africa, and whose leader has spent years cultivating Western security support.

At least 33 people were being treated in hospital, including five who were in critical condition, police spokesperson Fred Enanga said.

The death toll including the three bombers was six, Enanga said.

A diplomat told Reuters two police were among the victims. Enanga confirmed the death toll included police but declined to give further details.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Police said intelligence indicated the Islamic State-aligned Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were responsible.

“Our intelligence … indicates that these are domestic terror groups that are linked to ADF,” Enanga said.

The explosions – the first near the central police station and the second very close to parliament – sent bloodied office workers rushing for cover over shards of broken glass as a plume of white smoke rose above the downtown area.

A suicide bomber wearing a backpack carried out the first blast near the checkpoint at the police station, which killed two people, Enanga said. The second attack, involving two suicide bombers on motorbikes, killed one other person.

“A booming sound like that from a big gun went off. The ground shook, my ears nearly went deaf,” said Peter Olupot, a 28-year-old bank guard who was near the attack close to parliament.

“I saw a vehicle on fire and everyone was running and panicking. I saw a boda boda (motorcycle) man – his head was smashed and covered in blood.”

A Reuters journalist saw burned cars behind a police cordon at the scene and a reporter with local television station NTV Uganda said he saw two bodies in the street.

Anti-terrorism police caught another person who was preparing to carry out an attack, Enanga said, adding: “We are now pursuing other members of the terror group.”

MILITANT GROUPS

The al Qaeda-linked Somali insurgent group al Shabaab has carried out deadly attacks in Uganda in the past, including a 2010 attack that killed 70 people.

Ugandan soldiers are fighting al Shabaab in Somalia as part of an U.N.-backed African Union peacekeeping force. An al Shabab spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The ADF is a separate group, founded by Ugandan Muslims but now largely active in the forested mountains of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has been blamed for thousands of civilian deaths.

Last month, Islamic State made its first claim of responsibility for a blast in Uganda – an attack on a police station in Kampala’s Kawempe neighborhood in which no one was killed.

It later also said a “security detachment” in “Central Africa Province” had placed a bomb in a restaurant. Police said it killed a waitress and wounded three others, and linked it to the ADF, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Also last month, Ugandan police said a suicide bomber had blown up a bus, killing only himself. His affiliation was unclear.

Dino Mahtani of the think tank International Crisis Group said ADF’s focus had once been on settling local scores and controlling local war economies.

“With the more recent affiliation of its main faction to ISIS (Islamic State), a number of foreigners from across East Africa with more globalist jihadist agendas have been arriving into its camps,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Giles Elgood, Angus MacSwan and Timothy Heritage)

Uganda charges lawmakers allied to opposition leader with murder

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Ugandan prosecutors on Tuesday charged two lawmakers allied to opposition leader Bobi Wine with the murder of three people, following a spate of unsolved killings that have stoked widespread public alarm.

Wine’s opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) dismissed the prosecution of the two MPs, Muhammad Ssegirinya and Mr Allan Ssewanyana, both NUP members, as a politically motivated attempt by authorities to smear the party.

Appearing at a court in Masaka town in central Uganda, south of the capital Kampala, the two were charged with the three murders and remanded in prison, Joel Ssenyonyi, a fellow NUP lawmaker and the party’s spokesperson, told Reuters.

Security agencies have been investigating a spate of killings of at least 26 people in a wide area around Masaka in recent weeks.

In accounts widely reported in local media, machete-wielding men would arrive at victims’ homes in the middle of the night and cut them to death. Most of those killed were elderly people.

The area where the attacks have occurred voted overwhelmingly against incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, 76, in a presidential election in January 2021.

Police on Monday said they had arrested 23 suspects linked to the killings, adding some implicated the two lawmakers during interrogation as “the masterminds behind the vicious murders.”

The motive, police said, citing suspects, was to attack elderly residents who had voted for Museveni. Information minister Chris Baryomunsi last month told local television that politicians were behind the killings, but did not name them.

The NUP reacted dismissively.

“This is just political witch-hunt,” Ssenyonyi said.

“This is just a plan they hatched to implicate the opposition … they know the real killers,” Ssenyonyi said.

Riding on his youthful energy and his fame, 39-year-old Wine, who is also a pop star, has gathered a large youth following. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has presented a formidable challenge to Museveni and his ruling National Resistance Movement party.

Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, was ultimately declared winner of the election, although Wine rejected the results as fraudulent. The United States and other western countries said the poll lacked credibility.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema, Editing by William Maclean)

Ugandan opposition says troops raid its offices amid election challenge

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Bobi Wine, leader of Uganda’s main opposition party, said troops raided its headquarters on Monday as staff tried to prepare a legal challenge to President Yoweri Museveni’s declared victory in an election last week.

Wine, himself under house arrest, said party leaders were now on the run. “Our party office has been raided by the military and been cordoned off,” Wine told Reuters. “Everybody is being pursued.”

Police spokesman Patrick Onyango said the National Unity Platform (NUP) office had been cordoned off for security reasons, but he gave no more details and did not say if troops had entered the premises.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, said later on Twitter that the U.S. ambassador to Uganda was sent away from his gate after she tried to visit him. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy on the planned visit.

The electoral commission declared incumbent Museveni the winner of the Jan. 14 election on Saturday, triggering protests in two areas. Wine, a former pop star-turned-legislator, came second and accused Museveni of winning by fraud.

In the election, where voters were also choosing members of parliament, Wine’s NUP won 61 seats. Five other opposition parties won 48 seats, giving opposition lawmakers in the next House 109 in total, a government statement said on Monday. The ruling party won 316 seats.

Wine had appealed to youth to vote out Museveni, a 76-year-old in power since 1986. Wine’s songs have frequently criticized Museveni for corruption and nepotism, accusations he denies.

Museveni, one of Africa’s longest-ruling leaders, has dismissed the allegations of fraud and said the election may turn out to be the “most cheating-free” in Ugandan history.

The government wanted to disrupt documentation of voting fraud, NUP spokesman Joel Ssenyonyi said.

“They don’t want work to continue at our offices because they know that we are putting together evidence to show the world how much of a fraudster Museveni is.”

The campaign and election were marked by a deadly crackdown by security forces on opposition supporters and an internet shutdown. In one week of protests in November, at least 54 people died.

The government said opposition members and their supporters had been breaking public order laws and COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings. On Monday the government started to partially restore internet access.

The United States and Britain have called for investigations into reports of fraud and other election issues.

INCIDENT

Wine called for the military to release him from house arrest, saying his home was not a legally recognized detention center. He accused soldiers of assaulting his wife when she went into their garden.

“The soldiers were pulling her by the breasts,” he said, adding that the incident was filmed on video and she would share it when social media services were restored.

Military spokeswoman Brigadier Flavia Byekwaso said she was unaware of the incident.

The law gives petitioners 20 days after results are declared to challenge them in the Supreme Court. Wine said he wanted to meet with his party to decide on a strategy that could include peaceful protests.

But the military has surrounded Wine’s home in Kampala since Thursday, saying it is for his own safety.

Wine’s lawyers were denied access on Monday. One legislator for Wine’s party said he was beaten up by security forces when he tried to enter this weekend.

The NUP’s Ssenyonyi said such attacks, including on the party’s polling agents, were being carried out to cripple the court challenge.

At least 110 polling agents from Wine’s party have been arrested since the eve of the election. Some 223 suspects have been arrested during the election on offences that include assault, intimidation and voter bribery, police said.

(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by George Obulutsa and Mark Heinrich)

Congolese cross-border trader’s Ebola death fuels Uganda outbreak fears

FILE PHOTO: A Congolese health worker prepares to administer Ebola vaccine, outside the house of a victim who died from Ebola in the village of Mangina in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 18, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland/File Photo

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – A Congolese woman who died of Ebola this month vomited four times in a Ugandan market after crossing the border days earlier to sell fish, the WHO said, fuelling fears that the virus may be spreading beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The current outbreak of the highly infectious disease has been all but confined to Congo, killing 1,673 people there – more than two-thirds of those who contracted it – over the past year, and three in Uganda last month.

A World Health Organization panel is debating whether to declare the outbreak “of international concern”, a designation that the agency’s head suggested a case this month in the large Congolese city of Goma had made more likely.

The fisherwoman traveled across the border to Mpondwe market on July 11, according to a Ugandan Health Ministry report published on Wednesday by the WHO.

It said 19 fishmongers were listed as having had possible contact with her while another 590 could be targeted for vaccination.

The health response to the virus relies on tracking down and testing people who may have been exposed to it and vaccinating them and anybody they have had contact with.

Ugandan and Congolese officials were working to find people who might have been put at risk by the dead woman, who appeared to have used an illegal border crossing, health ministry spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyona said.

So far “no one has been found to be positive of the Ebola virus. The team is still monitoring the tested traders,” he said.

The report said health workers had not established where the fishmonger spent nights, who transported her merchandise and who cleaned up her vomit.

The Ministry and the WHO said there were currently no confirmed Ebola cases in Uganda.

The WHO’s emergency committee of international experts were meeting on Wednesday for a fourth time to consider if the 11-month outbreak constituted a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC), and will announce their decision at 1700 GMT.

A PHEIC declaration would be just the fifth in WHO history and include recommendations for international action. It could also help unlock sorely needed funds.

Last month the committee decided the potential disruption of declaring one risked causing economic harm while achieving nothing.

But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week that the case in Goma was a potential game-changer since it meant Ebola might now spread among the urban population and into neighboring Rwanda.

A separate WHO report cited a very high risk for Uganda’s Arua district, which borders a Congolese area where an Ebola patient died after having had contact with over 200 people. Two deaths in Arua were under investigation.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Nairobi newsroom; Editing by Gareth Jones and John Stonestreet)

Family sent back to DR Congo after two die of Ebola in Uganda

A health worker checks the temperature of a woman as she crosses the Mpondwe border point separating Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the ebola screening at the computerised Mpondwe Health Screening Facility in Mpondwe, Uganda June 13, 2019. REUTERS/Newton Nabwaya

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Authorities repatriated the relatives of two people who died of Ebola in Uganda back to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, including a 3-year-old boy confirmed to be suffering from the disease, the Ugandan health minister said.

The cases marked the first time the virus has crossed an international border since the current outbreak began in Congo last August. The epidemic has already killed 1,390 people in eastern Congo.

The family sent home on Thursday had crossed from Congo to Uganda earlier this week and sought treatment when a 5-year-old boy became unwell. He died of Ebola on Tuesday. His 50-year-old grandmother, who was accompanying them, died of the disease on Wednesday, the ministry said.

They were the first confirmed deaths in Uganda in the current Ebola outbreak.

The dead boy’s father, mother, 3-year-old brother and their 6-month-old baby, along with the family’s maid, were all repatriated, the minister’s statement said.

The 3-year-old has been confirmed to be infected with Ebola. His 23-year-old Ugandan father has displayed symptoms but tested negative, Ugandan authorities said.

“Uganda remains in Ebola response mode to follow up the 27 contacts (of the family),” the statement said.

Three other suspected Ebola cases not related to the family remain in isolation, the ministry said.

The viral disease spreads through contact with bodily fluids, causing hemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding.

UGANDA PRECAUTIONS

Authorities in neighboring Uganda and South Sudan have been on high alert in case the disease spreads.

On Thursday, Uganda banned public gatherings in the Kasese district where the family crossed the border. Residents are also taking precautions, local journalist Ronald Kule told Reuters.

“They are a little alarmed now and they realize that the risk of catching Ebola is now real,” he said.

“Hand washing facilities have been put in place, with washing materials like JIK (bleach) and soap. There’s no shaking of hands, people just wave at each other.”

At the border, health workers checked lines of people and isolate one child with a raised temperature, a Reuters journalist said.

Uganda has already vaccinated many frontline health workers and is relatively well prepared to contain the virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) sent 3,500 doses of a Merck experimental vaccine to Uganda this week, following 4,700 initial doses.

Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, said that he expected Uganda to approve the use of experimental therapeutic drug treatments, to be shipped “in coming days”.

Monitoring and vaccination had been stepped up, but there had been “no panic reaction” so far to the cases there.

The WHO has said it will reconvene an emergency committee on Friday to decide whether the outbreak is an international public health emergency and how to manage it.

Authorities have struggled to contain the disease partly because health workers have been attacked nearly 200 times this year in conflict-hit eastern Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Omar Mohammed and Katharine Houreld; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Uganda makes arrests in kidnap of American tourist and her guide

U.S. tourist Kimberly Sue Endicott poses with her guide, Jean Paul Mirenge in Uganda, April 7, 2019, in this image taken from social media. Wild Frontiers/via REUTERS

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Uganda said Tuesday some suspects had been arrested in connection with last week’s kidnap of an American tourist and her tour guide in a national park while a minister told a local TV that a ransom had been paid to free them.

Tourist Kimberley Sue Endecott, 35, and guide Jean Paul Mirenge-Remezo were ambushed and seized by gunmen as they drove in Queen Elizabeth National Park in the country’s southwest near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo on April 2.

It’s one of Uganda’s most visited parks, home to antelopes, lions, elephants, hippos, crocodile and leopards.

The kidnappers later demanded a ransom of $500,000. On Sunday Ugandan security officials said they had rescued the pair unharmed near the border.

In a statement on Tuesday, police said: “The joint security team actively investigating the kidnapping incident … has made some arrests of suspects, on suspicion of being involved.”

Police did not give details about the suspects but said they had been detained during “raids and extensive searches” in Kanungu district, more than 400 km (250 miles) southwest of the capital Kampala.

On Tuesday, junior tourism minister, Godfrey Kiwanda Ssubi, told NBS TV that a ransom was paid to secure the victims.

“Whatever these people (kidnappers) demanded for was paid,” Ssubi said.

“The money had to be taken … everything was done to save the lives of these people.”

Ugandan security officials had earlier refused to acknowledge the payment despite several reports in local and international media.

The United States has maintained it follows a policy of no concessions to kidnappers although the tour firm that arranged the safari told Reuters the captives were released after a “negotiated settlement” with the assistance of the US government.

In a tweet on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ugandan authorities to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice “openly and quickly”.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Uganda says kidnapped American tourist did not take armed guard

Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda

KAMPALA (Reuters) – An American woman who was kidnapped with her driver at Uganda’s most popular wildlife park by gunmen had failed to take an armed ranger as required by the park’s regulations, a spokesman for the country’s wildlife authority said on Thursday.

Kimberley Sue Endecott, 35, and Ugandan driver Jean Paul were on a game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park when four gunmen ambushed their vehicle on Tuesday evening, police said.

An elderly couple also at the scene were not taken and raised the alarm.

Various illegal groups from Somali militant Islamists to Congolese-based rebels sometimes operate in Uganda, but the kidnappers’ identity was not known.

“We have armed ranger guides, if you’re going out on a drive in the park you’re supposed to have one but these tourists went out on their own without a guard,” Bashir Hangi, spokesman for the state-run Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), told Reuters.

“From their camp in the park, they just got into a vehicle and went out. They should have notified us and informed us that they’re going out for a game drive and then we would have availed them a guard but they didn’t do this.”

California-based Endecott and the couple entered Uganda on March 29 and flew the next day to the park in the country’s southwest, the spokesman added.

There was no immediate comment on the progress of the investigation by Ugandan authorities.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Ebola outbreak in east Congo now world’s second biggest

FILE PHOTO: A medical worker wears a protective suit as he prepares to administer Ebola patient care at The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) treatment center in Beni, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Fiston Mahamba/File Photo

KINSHASA (Reuters) – The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is now the second biggest in history, with 426 confirmed and probable cases, the health ministry said late on Thursday.

The epidemic in a volatile part of Democratic Republic of Congo is now only surpassed by the 2013-2016 outbreak in West Africa, where more than 28,000 cases where confirmed, and is bigger than an outbreak in 2000 in Uganda involving 425 cases.

Ebola is believed to have killed 245 people in North Kivu and Ituri provinces where attacks by armed groups and community resistance to health officials have hampered the response.

Congo has suffered 10 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered there in 1976. It spreads through contact with bodily fluids and causes hemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding, and in many flare-ups, more than half of cases are fatal.

“This tragic milestone clearly demonstrates the complexity and severity of the outbreak,” Michelle Gayer, Senior Director of Emergency Health at the International Rescue Committee said in a statement. “The dynamics of conflict (mean) … a protracted outbreak is … likely, and the end is not in sight.”

(Reporting by Giulia Paravicini; Editing by Tim Cocks and Andrew Heavens)

Congo Ebola outbreak poses high regional risk, says WHO

An ambulance from the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) drives through a street in the town of Beni in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2, 2018. REUTERS/Samuel Mambo

By Tom Miles and Fiston Mahamba

GENEVA/GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – An Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is likely spread over tens of kilometers and poses a high regional risk given its proximity to borders, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Thursday.

Four people have tested positive for Ebola in and around Mangina, a town of about 60,000 people in North Kivu province, 100 km (62 miles) from the Ugandan border, the health ministry said. Another 20 people died from unidentified haemorrhagic fevers in the area, mostly in the second half of July.

Just last week, a previous outbreak on the other side of the Central African country was declared over after killing 33 people.

“It would appear that the risk, as we can surmise for DRC, is high. For the region it’s high given the proximity to borders, particularly Uganda,” said WHO’s emergency response chief Peter Salama.

“We are talking about tens of kilometers but I stress that this is very preliminary information at this stage.”

Ebola is believed to be transported long distances by bats and can find its way into bushmeat sold at local markets and eaten. Once present in humans, it causes haemorrhagic fever, vomiting, and diarrhea and is spread through direct contact with body fluids. Over 11,300 people died of an epidemic in West Africa from 2013 to 2016.

This is the vast, forested central African country’s 10th outbreak since 1976 when the virus was discovered near Congo’s Ebola river in the north. That is more than twice as many epidemics as any other country.

The response to Congo’s previous outbreak was considered a success despite the 33 deaths, as the use of a vaccine made by Merck helped contain the virus.

The kind of Ebola in the latest outbreak has been confirmed as the Zaire strain that the Merck vaccine protects against, Congo’s health ministry said late on Thursday. This should allow health officials to again use what has become the greatest weapon against Ebola epidemics to date.

Still, this outbreak poses new challenges. Eastern Congo is a tinderbox of conflicts over land and ethnicity stoked by decades of on-off war and this could hamper efforts to contain the virus.

About 1,000 civilians have been killed by armed groups and government soldiers around Beni since 2014, and the wider region of North Kivu holds over 1 million displaced people.

“FAST AS POSSIBLE”

Officials in Mangina rushed on Thursday to educate people about the risks of spreading the virus in a town that one local nurse told Reuters had no ambulance service.

Agents were deployed to warn people about the need for strict hygiene and the local radio station passed on messages about how to act, a local journalist said by phone.

“There is a great panic among the local population following the appearance of the Ebola epidemic,” said a nurse by phone, who asked not to be named.

The hospital where she works has already seen three people die recently of haemorrhagic fever. The hospital was awaiting help from the Red Cross to bury the bodies properly, she said.

Meanwhile, Uganda has set up screening at the land border it shares with Congo and at its Entebbe international airport.

“Ebola is highly infectious so we have put in place measures,” Uganda’s Junior Health Minister Sarah Achieng Opendi told Reuters.

An international delegation including officials from the United Nations, the World Bank and the WHO is in Beni, 30 km from Mangina.

(Reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Fiston Mahamba in Goma, Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kampala, Writing by Edward McAllister and Tim Cocks, editing by William Maclean and Rosalba O’Brien)