Osuta Yusuf

The US government has announced sanctions against some Ugandan officials over human rights violations orchestrated during and after the 2021 elections. In a statement released on Friday, the US government secretary of State, Antony John Blinken said there has been an increased downward trajectory for the country’s democratic credentials, adding that this was experienced in the 2021 polls. “Today I am announcing visa restrictions on those believed to be responsible for or complicit in undermining the democratic processes in Uganda, including the country’s January,14 general election and the campaign period that preceded it,” the statement by Blinken said. The November 18 and 19 protests after the arrest of National Unity Platform presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine saw over 50 people killed, other injured whereas hundreds were later arrested in the resultant crackdown on the masterminds of the deadly protest. . There was also a crackdown especially by...

Police have today met eminent women from Women Situation Room and discussed critical areas including preventing violence during an electoral process.   The meeting was chaired by CPC, AIGP Asan Kasingye on behalf of the IGP. The parties discussed and together agreed to involve the youth and women considering the fact that they are the major victims of violence associated with electoral process.  The meeting also agreed on routine stakeholder engagement as well as community policing as an ultimate panacea for the lasting and sustainable peace.  In a special way, the eminent women in their various voices thanked AIGP Kasingye for being a role model not only to the police but the society he lives and justified their praise to the CPC by quoting various examples where AIGP Kasingye has been seen as a mediator,  peace maker, human rights defender and above all a philanthropist.

In 2018, Komakech, now 37, perceived the idea of asking his partner for a hand in marriage. To him, marrying his partner at the youthful age of 17 was a dream. “I come from the Payira clan and we treasure the marriage institution as one of our cultural values,” Komakech says. The teacher by profession and a resident of Gulu City was asked to pay Shs22m in cash as part of the bride price and 14 head of cattle, plus goats and chicken. “This family had received Shs30 million in dowry from a rich in-law and I thought they would be lenient with me, considering my background,” Komakech says. Following years of negotiations, his offer of Shs7m was rejected by the girl’s family and he was forced to call off the marriage. On his part, Mr Joseph Lubangakene, 29, says the parents of his wife-to-be asked him to pay Shs15m as bride price, which was reduced to Shs12m after negotiations. He adds: “Besides the money, I was asked to buy a big solar panel and other electronics, which to me never exi...

  More than 2,000 special police constables (SPCs), who were recruited to provide security during the recently-concluded general election, have refused to hand over their uniforms over unpaid salaries. They claim that they were discharged from the police force without getting their payment for March. In January, the government recruited about 50,000 special police constables across the country to provide security during the election period. The recruits were trained and given a three-month contract.  Each constable was entitled to a Shs375,000 monthly salary. However, in Lango Sub-region, the police constables claim only two months were cleared. Seven of the affected personnel told Daily Monitor on condition of anonymity that they will never return government stores unless they are paid. “If they want me to return the uniform, they must first sort me out,” a discharged SPC said last week. The North Kyoga regional police spokesperson, Mr James Ekaju, however, asked the affected...

You’ve heard of Apple’s famous walled garden, the tightly controlled tech ecosystem that gives the company unique control of features and security. All apps go through a strict Apple approval process, they are confined so sensitive information isn’t gathered on the phone, and developers are locked out of places they’d be able to get into in other systems. The barriers are so high now that it’s probably more accurate to think of it as a castle wall.  Virtually every expert agrees that the locked-down nature of iOS has solved some fundamental security problems, and that with these restrictions in place, the iPhone succeeds spectacularly in keeping almost all the usual bad guys out. But when the most advanced hackers do succeed in breaking in, something strange happens: Apple’s extraordinary defenses end up protecting the attackers themselves. Related Story. Inside NSO, Israel's billion-dollar spyware giant. The world’s most notorious surveillance company says it wants to clean up its...

By Amvesi Andrew Cohen The local residents of Arua have petitioned the office of the Arua City Clerk and the National Forest Authority (NFA) over the alleged ‘fraudulent’ give-away of Barifa central forest reserve to Denis Lee Oguzu, the Maracha County MP. In a petition handed over to Cornelius Jobile, the Arua City Deputy Clerk and Robert Owiny, the NFA Range Manager West Nile on Tuesday, the locals alleged that Oguzu was illegally given a 2-year license for Eco-Tourism development and forest conservation activities in the 236 Hectares Barifa central reserve forest. The locals were led by Kamure Titia, the former Terego district LC5 contestant, Malon Avutia, the Ayivu Division Mayor Elect and Geoffrey Feta, the Ayivu East Division MP Elect. The aggrieved team accompanied by some members of Arua business community and a section of Ayivu elders alleged that legal and administrative procedures were not complied with in the allocation of Barifa forest thus rendering the entire process irr...

By Obedgiu Samuel The plan to scrap the OTT tax, which Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) said had yielded less-than-expected revenue. Since the government shutdown of the Internet a few days to the January 14th most fraudulent elections which involved varieties of cases in regards to human rights abuses, the risk-value of investors that seek to use the Uganda internet has gone up. Instead of addressing that, they are now imposing higher taxes. A recent study by telecom regulator, Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) put the cost of acquiring 1 gigabyte of internet in Uganda at $2.67(Shs9819). Compared to Kenya (President H.E Uhuru Kenyatta ) , Tanzania (President H.E.Samia Suluhu Hassan ) and Rwanda (President H.E Paul Kagame ) at $2.41(Shs8863), $2.18(Shs8017) and $2.18(Shs8017) respectively, Uganda’s is the highest. This tax is even going to make data more expensive, making businesses’ cost of operation even higher. The cost of internet has many dependencies, notably the cost of landi...

Retired Colonel Dr Kizza Besigye Apologises; Yesterday, I posted on this page my opinion regarding the sudden passing of Archbishop Kizito Lwanga. In that post, I referred to an article of the Daily Monitor newspaper of 5th March 2021 headed: “Lwanga’s postmortem results still inconclusive”.  It said that having failed to see any of the easily seen causes, the doctors had “opted to carry out further toxicological and histological analysis; the first to find out if there’s poison in the body,..” I also relied on some other sources that corroborated the Daily Monitor story.  These sources seem to have had incorrect information, from what has since been formally said by the Catholic Church and the doctors involved in the process.  My apologies to the readers who may have been consumed by the inaccurate information and, similarly, to the Catholic Church and late Archibishop Lwanga’s family. The important point I wanted to highlight though, and which should not be discounted a...

In what's likely to be a goldmine for bad actors, personal information associated with approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide has been leaked on a popular cybercrime forum for free—which was harvested by hackers in 2019 using a Facebook vulnerability. The leaked data  includes full names, Facebook IDs, mobile numbers, locations, email addresses, gender, occupation, city, country, marital status broken, account creation date, and other profile details down by country, with over 32 million records belonging to users in the U.S., 11 million users the U.K., and six million users in India, among others. In total, the data being offered includes user information from 106 countries. Additionally, the data seems to have been obtained by exploiting a vulnerability that enabled automated scripts to scrape Facebook users' public profiles and associated private phone numbers en masse. The flaw has since been fixed by Facebook. "This is old data that was previously reported...

The revelation comes on the back of an amended law that will require all motor vehicle owners to pay an annual fee in a larger plan that seeks to increase revenue mobilisation.  Previously, it has only been commercial vehicles that had been required to pay an annual license.  However, under the amended Traffic and Road Safety Act, 2020, government will require all motor vehicle owners, including private cars, to pay an annual license, whose fee is yet to be determined.  Speaking at the weekend, Mr Patrick Ocailap, the Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, said they had discussed different ways through which road users would contribute to creating a sustainable road sector funding programme and decided to revive the road license, which had been scrapped in the 90s.  “Yes, it is one of the discussions. Remember, we used to pay the road license. The discussion took place around owners of motor vehicles in respect to contributing to what we are investing in roads and also co...

Starting in version 90, Chrome’s address bar will use  https://  by default, improving privacy and even loading speed for users visiting websites that support HTTPS. Chrome users who navigate to websites by manually typing a URL often don’t include “http://” or “https://”. For example, users often type “example.com” instead of “https://example.com” in the address bar. In this case, if it was a user’s first visit to a website, Chrome would previously choose  http://  as the default protocol 1 . This was a practical default in the past, when much of the web did not support HTTPS. Chrome will now default to HTTPS for most typed navigations that don’t specify a protocol 2 . HTTPS is the more secure and most  widely used scheme  in Chrome on all major platforms. In addition to being a clear security and privacy improvement, this change improves the initial loading speed of sites that support HTTPS, since Chrome will connect directly to the HTTPS endpoint without...

Employees at Daily Monitor and other Nation Media Group outlets in Uganda are uncertain about their future after the company announced that it would be re-organising itself to become more efficient, a polite way of saying they will be laying off some staff members. In a statement dated March 25, 2021 issued by Tony Glencross, the managing director of NMG in Uganda, the company said its performance had been greatly affected by Covid-19 and even the several cost-cutting measures instituted had not been quite successful. Glencross said under the circumstances, the company will have to make radical changes in its operations and change its business model from “traditional advertising to content-driven revenue.” This, he said, will “regrettably… result in a reduction of our workforce effective Wednesday, March 31, 2021.” “This is an extremely difficult decision especially in view of the prevailing circumstances and the impact it will have on those affected and their families,” Glencross’ sta...

The Minerals Protection Unit of the Uganda Police Force is to sensitise the locals in the Karamoja sub region ahead of the aerial survey that is yet to begin.  Aerial surveying is to be done in conjunction with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development.  According to Mineral Protection Unit Commandant, SP Jesca Keigomba, the unit and the line ministry have embarked on a sensitization and alertness campaign in the districts of Karamoja to inform the locals there that the exercise is for the good of the country. The mineral protection unit has been around most parts of the country sensitizing the local artisans miners about the dangers of illegal mining that is taking place countrywide and advising them against the use of chemicals during mining. The sensitization comes after the arrival of two aircraft from a Spanish company,  XCaliber, on Tuesday.  According to SP Keigomba, aerial surveying is expected to improve mineral exploration, increase local and foreign i...

Facebook said it has disrupted a hacking operation that used the social media platform to spread iOS and Android malware that spied on Uyghur people from the Xinjiang region of China. Malware for both mobile OSes had advanced capabilities that could steal just about anything stored on an infected device. The hackers, which researchers have linked to groups working on behalf of the Chinese government, planted the malware on websites frequented by activists, journalists, and dissidents who originally came from Xinjiang and had later moved abroad. “This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation while obfuscating who’s behind it,” Mike Dvilyanski, head of Facebook cyber espionage investigations, and Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy, wrote in a post on Wednesday. “On our platform, this cyber espionage campaign manifested primarily in sending links to malicious websites rather than direct sharing of the malware itself.” Infecting iPhone...