The European parliament on Thursday voted and adopted 19 resolutions condemning human rights violations in Uganda and reiterated sanctions against culpable individuals in the country.
The legislators in EU parliament were taking stock of human rights violations focusing on the 14th January presidential election in Uganda.
Uganda’s Electoral Commission (EC) on 16th January 2021, declared the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni with 58 per cent of the total polls cast followed by National Unity Platform candidate Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine who polled 35 per cent of the votes. Kyagulanyi has since petitioned the Supreme court with over 26 grounds to have Museveni’s election victory annulled over alleged election malpractice and rigging.
The EU parliament condemned “the violence, continued harassment and systematic crackdown faced by political opposition leaders” as well as suppression of civil society organizations through freezing their bank accounts with government accused them of funding opposition activities.
In a 632 votes in favour and 15 against with 48 abstentions legislators focused on the January 14 general elections which they said: “were neither democratic nor transparent.” Parliament reiterated that sanctions against individuals and organizations responsible for human rights violations in Uganda “must be adopted under the new EU human rights sanction mechanism, the so-called EU Magnitsky Act.”
The resolution comes days after the United Kingdom (UK) Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Dominic Rennie Raab revealed that following the deadly November 2020 protests in which over 54 people got killed, the UK took a decision to halt the funding of security-related projects in Uganda,
“we took the decision to pause funding of three projects totaling £40,909 which were working directly with the Ugandan security services. These projects include: one delivering human rights training to the Uganda Police Force, a second delivering human rights training to the Uganda Prison Service and a third project, providing materials to the UPDF to document and investigate conflict-related sexual violence.” Raab said.
Raab also said the UK is reviewing the permanent status of those paused projects and other UKAid projects.
