There were physical attacks on seven journalists in two separate incidents during Tuesday’s municipal and district elections as well as the attacks on two other journalists during February 18’s general election, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The violence against journalists during these two elections reached alarming proportions and seems to have...
Police in Kampala arrested the director and editor of the monthly newsmagazine Summit Business Review on Tuesday in connection with a caricature of President Yoweri Museveni that appeared on the cover of the October issue. Director Samuel Sejjaaka and Editor Mustapha Mugisha were released on bond but face continued interrogations, Sejjaaka told New York-based press freedom group Committee to...
The Broadcasting Council (BC) of Uganda has blocked privately-owned radio stations from live broadcasting a conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom, according to the Human Rights Network for Journalists. The Ttabamiruka is an annual conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom to review and discuss the social, cultural, economic and developmental issues of the kingdom. The theme for the 2010...
A group of Ugandans identified as homosexual in a newspaper article headlined "Hang Them" have won damages and a court injunction ordering the paper not to repeat the exercise, human rights groups said Monday, according to The Guardian. A high court judge ruled that the story in the Rolling Stone newspaper, which printed addresses and photographs of some of the 100 people it named as "Uganda's top...
The Anglican Bishop for Western Buganda Diocese, Kefa Kamya Ssemakula, on December 6 assaulted Brian Luwagga, a photojournalist with Kamunye newspaper. Kamunye is a Luganda-based affiliate of the Red Pepper publication. Luwagga was photographing the bishop at the Masaka High Court premises, where he had been taken by Christian followers in the Diocese contesting the way his successor had been...
CBS radio in Uganda resumed normal broadcasting at 9:30 a.m. on October 23 after being closed for a year. Its return to the air turns the page on the government’s closure of four radio stations amid rioting in Kampala in September 2009, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The press freedom organization nonetheless remains concerned about the climate for the...
Dickson Ssentongo, a news presenter on Prime Radio, a Seventh Day Adventist station in the southeastern district of Mukono, was beaten to death by unidentified assailants using metal bars as he walked to work on September 16, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Ssentongo's murder came just three days after radio and TV reporter Paul Kiggundu was lynched by...
Motorcycle taxi drivers beat freelance journalist Paul Kiggundu to death Saturday evening, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The drivers, commonly known as boda-boda, attacked Kiggundu while he was filming some of them demolishing a house in a town outside of Kalisizio, southwest Uganda. Local journalists told CPJ that the drivers were...
Two resident district commissioners (RDC) arrested Red Pepper Publications Ltd photojournalist Tony Kizito over the alleged publication of a defamatory story by Kamunye newspaper, a vernacular sister paper of Red Pepper, Kampala-based Human Rights Network for Journalists(HRNJ) has reported. Kizito, 28, was arrested on August 30. He was on his way to the Mukono town council when he was intercepted...
Uganda's Constitutional Court has declared the country's criminal sedition offence, which has been used to prosecute journalists, unconstitutional. The ruling was based on a 2005 constitutional review petition filed by the East African Media Institute and CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Andrew Mwenda over political radio commentary critical of the government. Mwenda told New York...
