Uganda reporter faces new charges over Garang remark
Nov 2, 2005 (KAMPALA) — Uganda’s government has brought 13 more charges of sedition and promoting sectarianism against a local journalist for his remarks about the death of Sudan’s Vice President John Garang, his newspaper said on Wednesday.
Andrew Mwenda, political editor of the Daily Monitor, had already denied a sedition charge filed in August over comments he made on a KFM radio show about the crash that killed Garang in Uganda’s presidential helicopter.
In court on Tuesday he denied the new allegations and accused Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of persecuting him.
“That is why all these charges are being lined up against me. I am an innocent man, and therefore not guilty,” he said, according to a transcript in the Daily Monitor on Wednesday.
Conspiracy theories ranging from sabotage to hijackers raged in the Ugandan media after Garang’s death on July 30.
Museveni was particularly angered by claims he lent his friend a defective aircraft, and has insisted journalists wait for the results of an ongoing international investigation.
Since the crash, he has been sharply critical of Mwenda.
The Broadcasting Council took KFM radio off the air for a week in August after Mwenda accused Uganda’s government of causing Garang’s death through incompetence.
Conrad Nkutu, managing director of Monitor Publications, which also owns KFM radio, criticised the new charges.
“This is a major assault on press freedom that deserves condemnation from people around the world who believe in the ideals of a free press,” Nkutu told Reuters.
Mwenda was charged with sedition on August 15 for “uttering words with the intention to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite dissatisfaction against the person of the president”.
He was later freed on bail and has filed a petition with the Constitutional Court challenging the sedition law.
The fresh charges against him include promoting sectarianism by “uttering words which are likely to create despondency and promote feelings of hostility among the Acholi people of Uganda on account of their tribe”.
On his August 10 KFM show, Mwenda had accused Museveni of failing to end a civil war that has devastated the ethnic Acholi areas of northern Uganda for almost two decades.
“I plead that Museveni is guilty of failure to protect the people of Acholi from (rebel leader Joseph) Kony’s murderous escapades,” he said on Tuesday, according to the transcript.
“The most basic responsibility of the state and any government is to protect the lives of its people. Museveni has failed to do this and is therefore guilty and should be brought here for trial. I plead not guilty,” Mwenda added.
(Reuters)