From: hrcoord@igc.apc.org (Human Rights Coordinator)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Subject: UPI: Amnesty criticises rights abus
Date: 11 Sep 92 19:24:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1476700445:000:3593
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Sep 11 12:24:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: UPI: Amnesty criticises rights abus

/* Written  6:34 pm  Sep 10, 1992 by vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:soc.cult.afric */

	LONDON (UPI) -- Six years after coming to power on a pledge to reform
human rights, the Ugandan goverment has failed to seriously address
continuing abuse by its army, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
	In a report entitled ``Uganda: The Failure to Safeguard Human Rights,
'' Amnesty said Ugandan officials have failed to halt years of killings,
torture and arrests by the central African country's National Resistance
Army.
	``The army still acts as if it is above the law, arbitrarily
arresting, torturing, and even killing civilians,'' Amnesty said. ``The
government's measures to curb violations so far have simply not
addressed the real, long-term problems.''
	Uganda had been torn by civil war and 20 years of violence by the
time the National Resistance Movement took control in 1986.
	With the slogan ``breaking with the past,'' the NRM promised to build
a ``new Uganda,'' with respect for human-rights central to its program.
	Early government actions indicated the new leadership planned to
translate its intentions into action, Amnesty said.
	Arbitrary harassment, torture and killing of civilians largely
stopped, and the government set up a Human Rights Commission to
investigate past violations, as well as an inspector general of
government to probe any future corruption and human-rights abuses.
	But despite the encouraging start, Amnesty said, a new pattern of
rights violations emerged in 1986 -- mostly committed by the new National
Resistance Army in the wake of organized opposition from Uganda's
northern and eastern regions.
	Amnesty said most abuses appear connected to the NRM's anti-
insurgency strategy, with ``massacres of unarmed civilians and
prisoners...(taking) place every year.''
	``The victims have included children and whole families,'' Amnesty
said. ``Some have been burned to death in their homes, others have
suffocated to death after being crammed into pits or other confined
places of detention. Yet others have been beaten or shot to death by
soldiers who apparently believe they are above the law.''
	Amnesty said the government seemed willing to condone a certain level
of violence, often blaming abuses on the legacy of the past, or invoking
Uganda's history of human-rights problems to suggest the situation had
improved.
	``It appears that the government is prepared to use the past as a
smokescreen to hide both its own complacency and, in some instances, the
deliberate and cynical violation of human rights by high-ranking
military and government officials,'' Amnesty said.
	The group added that most of the few human-rights probes the
government actually launched wound up being slow and inconclusive, and
never produced a report.
	``When the government does appear to take decisive action, it piles
violation on violation by executing soldiers -- often after unfair
military trials with no chance of appeal,'' the report said.
	Amnesty also said anti-government rebels violate human rights by
terrorizingcivilians into supporting guerrilla movements.
	For instance, Amnesty said, rebels abducted 43 schoolgirls in July
1991, repeatedly raping them and killing two.
	``There is no doubt that the rebels are not living up to their
obligation to respect humanitarian standards,'' Amnesty said. ``But
their failure to do so is no reason for the army to respond in kind.''
	A spokesman from the Uganda High Commission in London declined to
comment on the report.
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