Youth want UN to freeze funding to UHRC over silence on torture

A group of youth under their umbrella association of Torture Survivors of Uganda have petitioned the United Nations Human Rights Office to stop funding the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC).

They claim that the UHRC has remained majorly silent in the face of widespread human rights violations in the country.

On Monday, the group held a protest outside the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Kololo, where delivered their petition.

The protest was led by John Bosco Sserunkuuma, a councillor in Wakiso district.

Speaking to journalists shortly after the protest, Sserunkuma said that the UHRC has sided with government in the ongoing spate of torture and they now want UN to stop giving them funds.

“They have sided with a bloodthirsty dictator and do not want us to expose the ways his brutality has affected us. All the evidence you need is here on our bodies,” Sserunkuma, who has scars and torture marks said.

The UHRC is expected to issue a statement later on Tuesday, in response to the protest.

The petition comes at a time when the Ugandan government is on the stop over torture claims.

Earlier this month, National Unity Platform (NUP) cordinator for Kasese District Samuel Masereka came out, with wounds on his body, and told journalists that he had been arrested for supporting NUP president Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine.

Masereka said that he had been tortured while in incarceration and consequently sued government.

Novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was arrested in December last year also showed presented his torture marks to the media, and narrated his ordeal that attracted international attention.

The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) came out strongly to condemn all acts of torture in the country, saying that these undermine Uganda’s constitution.