Muntu questions Uganda’s human rights record after receiving Afghan evacuees

By Prossy Kisakye

Just a day after Uganda received 51 Afghan evacuees, local opposition politicians have begun questioning the NRM government’s human rights record and moral authority to host them.

The Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) president Rtd Maj. Gen Mugisha Muntu, says Afghans are running away from human rights abuses committed by the Taliban leaders, to Uganda which is equally infested with lots of human rights violations.

Several reports by the Uganda Human Rights Commission and other rights bodies have often ranked the security forces as the number one abusers of human rights.

While addressing the media at the party’s headquarters in Kampala, Muntu said that while he empathizes with the Afghan people, the government should prioritize the issue of rights violations at home and the plight of many Ugandans who are displaced in their own country by calamities like Kasese floods.

The country is expected to host about 2000 evacuees from Afghanistan and the foreign affairs state minister in charge of regional affairs in the ministry John Mulimba has assured those who have raised concern over the cost of hosting the evacuees, saying all expenses of hosting them at a hotel in Entebbe are to be covered by the US government.

The evacuees are simply in transit to other countries.

Written by Noelyn Nassuuna