Dear President Bush:
When you meet with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda next week, we urge you to raise the following human rights issues:
• Promoting both peace and justice in northern Uganda;
• Expanding the role of Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia to include protection of civilians and monitoring of human rights violations;
• Ending discrimination against HIV-positive and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons in Uganda; and
• Ensuring accountability for abuses committed by Ugandan soldiers in Uganda’s Karamoja region.
Peace and justice in northern Uganda
Human Rights Watch welcomes US government support for the position that perpetrators must be held accountable for atrocities committed in the twenty-year-long conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. Prosecutions of the most serious crimes by both sides are essential to achieving justice and a sustainable peace. Arrest warrants issued in July 2005 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for senior LRA leaders mark an important step towards obtaining justice for those made victim by LRA crimes.
The government and the LRA are currently exploring proposals for national trials of those who allegedly “bear particular responsibility” for the most serious crimes. The ICC permits national trials of its cases provided they are consistent with the Rome Statute of the ICC, while other international standards prescribe benchmarks for national trials. Prosecutions should entail competent and impartial investigations, trials that meet international due process standards, and for those convicted, punishments consistent with the gravity of crimes. ICC judges will determine whether national trials are an adequate alternative to ICC prosecutions.
As peace talks continue, the question of penalties for criminal offenses by both sides may become a major issue. Obviously “slap-on-the-wrist” punishment for war crimes and crimes against humanity would be tantamount to impunity.
In your meeting with President Museveni, we hope you will urge that serious crimes committed during the conflict with the LRA be fairly and credibly prosecuted. This is regardless of whatever other solutions, such as traditional justice measures, are adopted to promote reconciliation.
Deteriorating human rights situation in Somalia
Since January, when the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) returned to power in Mogadishu, fighting between TFG and Ethiopian forces on one side and a coalition of insurgent groups on the other has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and displaced up to 400,000 more. All sides have been responsible for serious violations of the laws of war, including Ethiopian forces backed by the United States. Independent Somali media and civil society have also come under increasing attack, including from TFG forces.
Ugandan forces currently comprise the only peacekeeping troops in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). At present, there is little prospect of additional African Union deployment to enable AMISOM to reach the proposed level of 8,000 troops, a benchmark for Ethiopian withdrawal. Meanwhile, AMISOM is authorized only to protect TFG institutions, and does not provide protection for civilians in Mogadishu.
We urge you and President Museveni to jointly condemn the targeting of civilians, including the media, aid workers, and members of civil society, and to call on all parties to the conflict to observe and uphold the laws of war and international human rights standards. Ugandan troops deployed in Somalia would benefit from appropriate human rights and humanitarian law training—we believe the US government should support such training. We also hope you can publicly encourage AMISOM to monitor abuses, including sexual violence, committed by all the parties in Somalia.
Discrimination against HIV/AIDS-affected persons in Uganda
Uganda remains a leader in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, especially in the area of AIDS treatment. However, the frank, open and honest dialogue about HIV/AIDS prevention—key to past success in Uganda—is increasingly being replaced by an environment in which those living with HIV, or perceived to be infected, are stigmatized, discriminated against, and blamed for their infections.
On September 24, 2007, President Museveni told representatives of 12 Ugandan universities that contracting HIV was akin to treason; such remarks invariably increase the stigma against those with HIV and harm public health efforts. In the past year, Ugandan lawmakers debated a bill that would penalize persons who knowingly transmit HIV. Laws criminalizing HIV transmission are inappropriate and ineffective, particularly in countries where those infected with HIV—especially women—are not always free to determine their own sexual behavior. UNAIDS and other public health agencies discourage such laws, but President Museveni has campaigned in favor of them, saying: “People who infect others [with HIV] deliberately are killers.”
There are estimated to be more than one million people living with HIV in Uganda today, and more than one hundred thousand people become newly infected each year. Only one in five children needing antiretroviral therapy (ART) have access to this lifesaving medicine; overall 70,000 people who need ART cannot access it. President Museveni’s statements and parliament’s proposed criminalization of HIV transmission will only undermine the fight against a worsening epidemic by creating an environment of blame and discrimination.
Discrimination and abuse based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Uganda
In August 2007, members of President Museveni’s government called for the full enforcement of the country’s draconian sodomy law—which punishes consensual same-sex sexual relations with up to life in prison. Ugandan officials have also threatened to pass even harsher laws. Promoting such legislation is part of a longstanding pattern of state harassment of people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. It also threatens discussion of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) in the Ugandan media.
LGBT individuals are excluded from HIV/AIDS initiatives, including programs sponsored by agencies underwritten by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In Uganda, the message of some of the abstinence-only programs supported by PEPFAR promotes homophobia and suppresses potentially lifesaving information about HIV prevention.
We urge you to remind President Museveni that discrimination against HIV-positive and LGBT persons in Uganda violates basic human rights and is dangerous to public health.
Human rights violations by Ugandan soldiers in Karamoja
In May 2006, the Ugandan army launched a “cordon and search” disarmament campaign to bring law and order to Uganda’s remote Karamoja region, where armed cattle raids and other gun violence claim countless lives each year. The Ugandan government has a right to get illegal guns out of the hands of ordinary citizens, but as Human Rights Watch has documented, Ugandan soldiers have committed human rights abuses during these disarmament operations, including unlawful killings, torture, and arbitrary detention.
In recent months, the Ugandan government has imposed stricter controls on its soldiers, and President Museveni has personally called for discipline among his forces and urged victims of abuses by soldiers to come forward. As a result, army operations in the region have become much less abusive. However, President Museveni’s government has failed to bring soldiers responsible for past human rights violations to account in a transparent and systematic manner.
We call on you to urge President Museveni to carry out a thorough investigation of events in Karamoja and prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations. We also ask that you urge him to address the root causes of violence in Karamoja, including the weakness of civilian justice and law and order institutions in the region.
We greatly appreciate your raising these matters of importance with President Museveni.
Sincerely,
Alison Des Forges
Senior Advisor, Africa Division
cc: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor
