On this day in 2022, President Museveni met Kenneth Roth and a delegation from Human Rights Watch in Ntungamo, Western Uganda, in a high-profile meeting that centred on allegations of torture, enforced disappearances and illegal detention by Uganda's security agencies.
The meeting came three months after Human Rights Watch published a report alleging widespread abuses in unofficial detention facilities, commonly referred to as "safehouses".
During the talks, Museveni pledged to send a clear public message to the Uganda People's Defence Forces and other security agencies that torture and unlawful detention would not be tolerated.
"Cases of illegal detention, torture and human rights violations will not be tolerated. Torture is not only wrong but unnecessary," Museveni said.
The Human Rights Watch delegation, which also included Africa Director Mausi Segun, pressed for accountability over alleged abuses.
Museveni promised that former Internal Security Organisation Director General Frank Bagyenda, widely known as Kaka Bagyenda, would be investigated and prosecuted over allegations linked to torture and extortion in ISO safehouses.
The discussions also touched on restrictions affecting civil society organisations and media freedom. Museveni pledged to address regulatory hurdles facing civil society groups and said security agencies should stop harassing journalists, allowing them to carry out their work without interference.
While describing the meeting as a positive step, Roth stressed that promises alone would not be enough.
"President Museveni's pledges to improve Uganda's increasingly repressive human rights record are a positive step. But they are meaningless as only rhetoric, and he needs to initiate concrete measures... Anything less than real security sector reform, alongside the prosecution of government officials implicated in serious abuses, would signify not only Museveni's tolerance of these abuses, but his complicity."
However, up until today, the 2022 meeting has proven to be a failure as the promised reforms never materialised: illegal detentions and allegations of torture of opposition figures and activists have persisted.
Furthermore, the harassment of journalists has actively deteriorated, highlighted by security forces brutally assaulting and hospitalising reporters from major outlets like NTV, NBS, and the Daily Monitor during the Kawempe North by-election, alongside state-enforced jail sentences for online commentators, and now the closure of the Nation Media offices.
