Rights group says Uganda intimidating reporters

KAMPALA - Uganda has launched a crackdown on independent media and the denial of a visa to a Canadian journalist is the latest example, a human rights body said today.

The statement came as Uganda's Broadcasting Council ordered a local radio station off the air in Gulu in the north of the country, saying it had violated standards and was operating without a license.

Blake Lambert, 34, who had lived in the east African country for three years and wrote for the Economist, was denied an entry visa on Thursday when he tried to return.

He was given no explanation but Uganda's government later called him a threat to national security, without elaborating.

"The government waited until the elections were over and most of the foreign press and observers had gone to kick out one of the few resident foreign journalists," said Jemera Rone, East Africa coordinator for Human Rights Watch (HRW).

"But government attempts to intimidate the media began before the elections," she added in a statement.

The authorities accused Lambert of "misrepresenting" Ugandan events and government sources said his critical style upset senior officials already unhappy with international coverage of the state's prosecution of opposition leader Kizza Besigye.

Lambert also wrote for newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor and Washington Times and was a radio correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Besigye lost polls on February 23 that extended President Yoweri Museveni's two-decade rule.

RADIO OFF AIR

The Broadcasting Council ordered Choice FM off the air two weeks after police searched its premises after it hosted opposition politicians who accused the army of abusing northerners sheltering in camps from two-decades of civil war.

HRW said several other local journalists were also facing serious criminal charges on account of their work.

On February 1, troops arrested four staff at Unity FM, another northern radio station, after it said the government was bringing people by bus to boost crowds at Museveni's rallies.

On election day, a police chief ordered another station in the north, Radio Veritas, to stop broadcasting for "violating the law", without giving any details, US-based HRW said.

An editor and reporter at the independent weekly Observer newspaper have been charged with promoting sectarianism for quoting opposition claims a clique of generals from the president's home area were orchestrating Besigye's persecution.

And Andrew Mwenda, a talk show host and political editor of the independent Daily Monitor newspaper is charged with sedition for allegedly "bringing into hatred or contempt or exciting dissatisfaction against the person of the president".

"Uganda has a vibrant and courageous media and the government must not try to limit its work though political prosecutions," Rone said.

- REUTERS