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 an angry crowd in the southern town of Rakai on September 10.
Aged 29, Ssentongo was found by a farmer lying in a pool of blood a few yards from where he was attacked while on his way to present the morning news programme. He died from his injuries a few hours later in a hospital. Neither his money nor his mobile phone was taken, which clearly indicates that robbery was not the motive.
Ssentongo, who had been presenting the news on Prime Radio for the past two years, was also a member of the opposition Democratic Party, for which he had run as a candidate in a local election. A team of policemen were sent to examine the scene of the murder.
This was the third murder of a journalist in Uganda in the past two and half years. Rebecca Wilbrod Kasujja, the presenter of a morning show on community radio Buwama FM in the southern district of Mpigi, was killed in February 2008.
"CPJ sends its condolences and sympathies to the family and colleagues of Dickson Ssentongo," East Africa Consultant of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Tom Rhodes, said. "Authorities must do their utmost to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice, especially at this politically sensitive time in the lead-up to national elections."
