Black Star News columnist was tortured on two occasions this year, including for writing the book he’s reading. Photo: From the author.
[My Free Thoughts]
Uganda’s shrinking civic space will not be solved by mere rhetoric statements from the international donor community because we have had enough of them. Their partnership with dictator Yoweri Museveni blooms and the donors have become enablers of his 35 years tyranny.
We have Musevenocracy instead of democracy and accountability. Civic space has been nipped right between the thumbs of an aged power-thirsty dictator who is committed to do everything to suppress those whose voices threaten his royal throne.
I thought the partnership between states had to depend on certain basic values, including democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. In the absence of these core values, why should there be a partnership in the first place? Museveni’s government has failed to democratize Uganda since 1986 when he installed himself in power after five years of bush war. He has sat on what he believes is an exclusive throne for 35 years—and he thinks it is his and no one else’s.
The international donor community cannot be blind to the daily bloodshed accompanying the current election cycle. If the mission is really not aiding and abetting dictatorship and bloodshed, they should punish Gen. Museveni’s regime by suspending non-humanitarian donations as Senator Bob Menendez has recommended in his resolution, and freezing the human rights perpetrators’ foreign assets. The abusers must also be placed on a travel ban.
Otherwise mere statements about the shrinking civic space will not have serious impact and never bring about change. Civic space is a bedrock of any democratic society. When you have a dictator who has been in power for 35 years, and who has destroyed the environment for civil society organizations and activists to thrive, you have looming instability.
Open, free, and plural civic space is a pivot of democratic societies. It allows citizens to be part of the political sphere beyond elections. It encourages governments to be transparent and accountable.
There are three minimum pillars of civic space; freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression. The three have been completely crushed in Uganda under Gen. Yoweri Museveni. Anyone who dares form independent organizations seeking good governance, or freely assembles with others, or freely expresses herself or himself, is declared an enemy of the state, picked up, tortured and charged with terrorism. In the case of human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo, the charge was “money laundering.”
The freezing of the accounts of several NGO, and individual accounts in Uganda, ahead of the next month’s elections is another desperate attempt to frustrate the legitimate work of those not in the pocket of the regime. When these groups are accused of sponsoring terrorism and subversion, it gives you a sense of regime paranoia. Imagine a regime in power for 35 years yet scared of NGOs even when there are strict laws regulating them.
Media houses are intimidated into not allowing broadcast space for opposition leaders because the regime threatens license cancellation.
The international donor community see Gen. Museveni’s crimes in Uganda. Talk is cheap. Close the purses and stop aiding and abetting Gen. Museveni’s state terrorism against Ugandans.
The columnist is the author of “Greedy Barbarians,” and “Banana Republic—Where Writing is Treasonous,” and a survivor of torture at the hands of Gen. Museveni’s regime. He can be reached via [email protected]