Ugandan speaks out
By George William Lugalambi Posted Sat, Jan 1 2000
Dec. 17, 1998, started like a typical journalist’s day at The Crusader, a newspaper I used to run as editor. It came out on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before The Crusader folded in April 1999 due to financial difficulties. We took the opportunity the day after each publication to do a post-mortem of the paper.
I had been out of the office for much of the afternoon, which I had spent at Makerere University where I lectured in the Department of Mass Communication. I called the newsroom late in the afternoon to find out how our reporters, writers and editors were shaping up with their work. In the jargon of our newspaper, we call it touching base.
The call was received by our chief sub-editor, who sounded anxious. She didn’t allow a chance for the exchange of pleasantries. She asked me to report to the office immediately. I insisted that I had to know beforehand if anything was wrong. When I was told that three police detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department — their leader armed with a search warrant and another with an AK47 rifle — had been sent to search our offices and newsroom, I expected the worst.
From Nov. 28, 1998, until this day, I had been summoned often by the CID to record a police statement over an opinion article our newspaper published on Nov. 19, 1998, about the supply of arms to cattle keepers in the country home area of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
The police said that the article, which was written by two contributors as a commentary on local and national politics, was meant to incite the public against the government, and hence was seditious.
I was subjected to about 16 hours of intense interrogation that stretched over different days. I argued in my police statement that as editor I published the article in the public interest.
I said that the arming of one section of people in this community had caused suspicion among those who had no access to arms to defend their cattle. The matter had been widely debated in the local district council.
The detectives who searched our office said they were looking for seditious material. This was the first time in the history of Ugandan journalism that a newspaper office was searched by agents of the state.
After the two-hour search, I was led to CID headquarters, and at dusk I was told I was under arrest. I was taken to the Central Police Station in Kampala and dumped in a cell for overnight custody.
Via e-mail, several international organizations that monitor press freedom, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists based in the United States, had been notified. My arrest had horrified the media fraternity in Uganda. A number of civil, political and media groups in the country were mounting pressure on the government to present me in court or to release me if it couldn’t charge me immediately.
On Dec. 18, 1998, after 24 hours in police detention, I was presented in court in Kampala and charged with promoting sectarianism. This was the first time a journalist in Uganda was charged with this under the Press and Sectarianism Law that was enacted in 1988. Even at the time it was enacted, this legislation was considered to be vague, spurious and prompted by the political exigencies of the time.
I got a temporary break in my ordeal when the court set me free on cash bail of US$250, and on condition that I deposit my passport in court.
But this was only the beginning of another ordeal. For nearly one year, I appeared in court every month for a trial that was never to be. Government prosecution dragged its feet, failed to produce witnesses and showed clearly that it had no legal interest in this case except to make a statement that criticism of the president and the political elite would not be tolerated. On Nov. 2, 1999, the director of public prosecution withdrew the charges against me, saying that the government was “no longer interested in pursuing the matter.”
I have since heard and read comments by journalists and other analysts who describe arrests such as mine as a hazard of journalism. “Occupational hazard,” they call it.
I find this a terribly disturbing notion. It not only apologizes for an obvious breach of the values of free speech, but also it accepts that journalists must inevitably submit to the vagaries of the state’s temper.
When the present government came in power as the National Resistance Movement in 1986, we thought journalism in Uganda had been freed from the arbitrariness of previous regimes. In fact, for quite a while journalists basked in the glow of a reasonable government that would use discretion in dealing with criticism in the media, however harsh it was.
With experiences like mine, journalists now know better than to take the present government for granted. We cannot rely on its professed claims of faith in the virtues of freedom of expression.
The fact that journalists cannot predict the reaction their reports, commentaries and opinions will get from government is a red flag for journalism in Uganda. The fear of the state’s wrath, even where legitimate criticism of government officials and policies are concerned, impairs a journalist’s objectivity.