06 May 2021 :

The Ugandan Parliament on 3 May 2021 passed the Sexual Offences Bill 2019, further outlawing “unnatural” same-sex relations and doubling down on laws criminalising the LGBT community.
The bill violates international human rights law by criminalizing consensual sexual acts between adults and yet falls short in its definition of consent, According to Human Rights Watch.
While offering provisions designed to prevent and punish sexual violence, it also further criminalizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and sex workers.
“Ugandan lawmakers should focus on ending endemic sexual violence rather than seeing this as an opportunity to imbed abusive provisions that criminalize the sex lives of consenting adults,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Sexual offenses legislation should advance the rights of survivors and potential victims of violence, not enshrine rights violations into law.”
The bill includes some positive provisions toward addressing sexual violence, including protecting sexual assault survivors’ rights during criminal proceedings and criminalizing sexual harassment by people in positions of authority, Human Rights Watch said.
But it also punishes any “sexual act between persons of the same gender,” as well as anal sex between people of any gender, with up to 10 years in prison, in flagrant violation of the rights to privacy and nondiscrimination. It even provides that if Ugandans perform these sexual acts outside Uganda, they can be prosecuted in Uganda.
The bill also provides that anyone who commits these offenses would be entered on a sex offenders register, in effect opening up the possibility of having a "register" of LGBT people or sex workers in Uganda that would not only be discriminatory but ripe for serious abuse.
The bill punishes family members who fail to report any offenses under the bill with up to three years in prison, effectively requiring Ugandans to turn in their LGBT relatives.
The bill criminalizes "false sexual allegations," a provision that activists fear could be used against survivors in a legal system that has often disregarded their claims.
It also includes provisions that discriminate based on HIV status and that could punish those who report crimes and allows for the death penalty for certain offenses.
The Sexual Offenses Bill prescribes the death sentence for “aggravated rape,” including when rape is committed by a person who is HIV positive.
“The Sexual Offenses Bill does not do enough for survivors, conflates consensual sexual acts with violence, and offers tools to persecute LGBT people and sex workers in Uganda,” Segun said.
“President Museveni should reject the bill and instruct parliament to present a revised bill that takes a proper rights-respecting approach to addressing sexual violence, so that survivors and the general public can reap the benefits.”

16 November 2021 :

Two Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) soldiers serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have been sentenced to death and three others to 39 years in jail for the deaths of civilians.
“A Ugandan military tribunal sitting in Mogadishu has found the two officers guilty of intentionally killing civilians near Golweyne neighborhood of Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region in August this year, and three others were sentenced to jail terms for their role in the crime,” Somalia’s justice minister, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, told VOA Somali on 13 November 2021.
“This sentence would be a lesson for the AMISOM mission that none of its soldiers would escape with murdering Somali civilians,” Nur said.
The incident occurred on 10 August, when Ugandan forces patrolling the main supply route between Beldamin and Golweyn villages opened fire on civilians at a farm about 120 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, according to local officials and an Amisom statement.
Relatives and eyewitnesses accused the Amisom soldiers of placing the bodies of some of the victims on remotely controlled mines before they were detonated, triggering local anger and protests in Mogadishu.
At the time, AMISOM reported that its forces were dislodging an impending al-Shabab ambush.
AMISOM forces admitted last month, though, that its peacekeepers unlawfully killed seven civilians during a gunfight between the mission's troops and al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab fighters, promising that the soldiers responsible would be held accountable.
The court proceedings had been running since 5 October at the heavily guarded Halane camp near Mogadishu’s main airport, where the U.N. and Amisom headquarters in Somalia are located.
Some of the relatives of victims and representatives of the Lower Shabelle farmers had attended the proceedings, and they were present at the court as the sentences were announced on 13 November.
A spokesman for the relatives, Hussein Osman Wasuge, told local media outside the court they were happy with the verdict.
“Even though there were no lawyers to represent us, one of us and six Ugandan soldiers were allowed to testify against the alleged soldiers for two days,” said Wasuge. “We are very happy with the court decision and expect compensation to be awarded to the families of those killed.”
Ugandan soldiers are based in the capital, Mogadishu, and the Lower Shabelle region, where they face frequent attacks and ambushes by the al-Shabab militant group.

18 May 2021 :

The High Court in Kampala on 17 May 2021 sentenced three man to 50 years in Jail for the kidnap and killing of an Eritrean businessman.
Daniel Michael Weldu, a resident of Muyenga and owned businesses in Uganda and South Sudan was abducted from Kololo, a leafy Kampala suburb on 27 October 2016 and the body later found burnt at the Uganda-Kenya border in Busia.
UPDF Captain Bumali Mangeni was convicted together with two civilians including Benon Duncan Lumu and Andrew Kisitu.
On 17 May afternoon, Justine Flavia Anglin Senoga said the three convicts deserved a sentence that would ensure the trio serves as an example to other would be offenders.
The Judge noted that the convicts deserved to be sentenced to death but the death sentence no longer exists in the Laws of Uganda and found the 50 years to be enough.
“The commission of the offences was meticulously premeditated and executed. All the convicts acted in furtherance of an unlawful purpose and each one played a part in the commission of the offences as they failed to dissociate themselves from the heinous acts, “Justice Senoga said.
The judge said the trio carried out the mission immaculately that they were able to kidnap the Eritrean businessman from Kololo, forced him to withdraw money from his bank account that they stole and later killed him, before burning the body kill evidence.
“The deceased was kidnapped, threatened to be charged with made up offences, sedated into unconsciousness, robbed and was eventually murdered for the sole purpose of stealing money that he had on his accounts. The kidnap was as a result of fraud and his death was not accidental but deliberately occasioned in furtherance of unlawful purpose.”
“The body of the deceased was set ablaze with an apparent intention of causing disguise about the cause of death and to hide the identity of the deceased.”
The judge consequently sentenced each of the three convicts to 50 years imprisonment for kidnap with intent to murder, 30 years for aggravated robbery and 50 years for murder of the businessman.
She also ordered that they pay shs200 million to the deceased’s family in compensation but also refund the money they robbed from the deceased.
“The sentences to run concurrently and the period spent on remand should be deducted,” she said.