By Reta Raymond
Associate Special Features Editor

I arrived in Kampala just two weeks after the opposition party ended its “Walk-to-Work” campaign.  They ended the campaign because they determined that the protest had come at a cost of too many lives.  Over roughly a month, people protested high fuel and commodity prices by walking to their respective offices instead of driving.  The military responded with liberal use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition.  They killed at least ten civilians, including two children.  The government has yet to investigate these deaths.

President Yoweri Museveni’s proposed constitutional amendment was another response to the protests.  He vowed that if he could not get parliamentary approval, he would seek a public referendum vote to pass the amendment.  The president wished to amend the Constitution so that persons charged with murder, rape, defilement, economic sabotage (a term that is not found in the Penal Code and remains undefined), and rioting could not apply for bail until they served a mandatory 180-day sentence on remand.

What made this proposed amendment so dangerous, I was told, was that charge sheets are often unsubstantiated or have weak evidence to support the charges.  Therefore, those opposition party members who were arrested during the Walk to Work Protests could be easily charged with “rioting” and then, pursuant to the amendment, be put in jail for at least six months.  This would be a quick and easy way for Museveni to slow the opposition party’s momentum.  Then, Museveni could continue doing whatever he pleased without his main opponents inciting protests.

This proposed amendment has drawn sharp criticism from local and international groups, as well as from members of parliament who believe that the proposal would violate fundamental human rights and freedoms.  One National Resistance Movement Member of Parliament (“MP”) stated, “In the last meeting, we told him that the move was unconstitutional and would one day fall back on us.”[1]  Another MP, Barnabas Tinkasimire, said, “The proposal is against people’s human rights and there are so many oppressive laws being forced on our people which we shall not accept.”[2]

Local attorneys suggest that, if enacted, the amendment would cause disharmony within the 1995 Constitution and would allow persons to be detained without trial.  Specifically, it would abrogate several constitutional provisions, including the presumption of innocence, an independent judiciary, the right to be free from detention without trial, the right to bail, the non-derogable right to a fair trial, and the protection of liberty.

I became involved when my boss enlisted me to write a paper that would discuss the constitutional amendment for the purpose of publication by a local group.  At first I was bewildered that the President could revoke the right to bail for such a potentially large group of people.  What became clear was that he was actually trying to rationalize detention without trial for the “Walk to Work” protestors who opposed his politics.  Even though Uganda boasts multiparty elections, such an amendment to the Constitution would effectively silence opposition party members through arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, which may signal that the country is actually a dictatorship.

The President continues to push the amendment to this day.  The proposed amendment may go for a public referendum vote, and, at least for show, the result is uncertain.  The President has won every election since 1986, but the elections are by no means entirely free and fair.  Therefore, the President’s amendment in a public referendum vote would probably be approved.

However, Museveni’s government recently found a new way to silence the opposition group, Activists for Change, who organized the “Walk to Work” campaign.  On April 4, 2012, a new law was imposed which declared Activists for Change to be an unlawful society, and made all of its public activities illegal.  This enactment came the day before the group’s planned celebration of the “International Day of Police Brutality” in Kampala.  Clearly this new law raises a host of constitutional issues, such as the right to assemble under Article 29 of the 1995 Ugandan Constitution.

In the last year, Uganda has seen much unrest in its streets, as the opposition party members were inspired by the change brought about in the Arab Spring.  Unfortunately, the protests have not materialized into a regime change like in Egypt and Tunisia, and Museveni’s response has been more akin to Syria’s.  However, the opposition party members bravely continue to protest for a better Uganda.

ICC Office of the Prosecutor Weekly Briefing June 2012 Issue 123

By Reta Raymond
Associate Special Features Editor

I visited a different orphanage, the Oasis of Life, which I believe has failed due to a lack of transparency.  My prior article highlighted Sanyu Babies Home, an orphanage that is largely succeeding, despite the lack of government assistance.  Oasis exemplifies how corruption and few direct donations can dramatically affect children’s health and well-being.  Much of what I have heard about Oasis can’t be independently verified, but I will still repeat what I have heard.  Oasis’ story is one that has broken my heart.

There are around seventy children at Oasis who are between zero and eighteen-years-old, and there is not enough money to support them.  The two or three live-in caretakers at Oasis are unpaid.  The children eat one meal per day, but have been known to go without food for days at a time.  To ration food, the children do not eat on Wednesdays; they simply pray. Tragically, it is rare that these children are sent to the hospital when they fall ill. Some of the children go to school, where the headmasters have waived their school fees, but others don’t.  Oasis hopes to start a school for the children on the compound.

The children sleep three to a bunk, and even the teenagers must have a bunkmate.  The compound is split into a boys’ and a girls’ house, and the older girls sleep away from the little girls.  However, all the boys sleep in the same room, at least three per mattress.  Many of the foam mattresses are thin and falling apart from having been washed so often when the children wet the bed.  The boys’ house did not even have electricity.  The children were not sleeping under mosquito nets when one group of travelers visited, so they bought some for the children. However, a couple months later a friend told me that the nets were gone.

Despite these hardships, when my group of friends and I visited, there were only happy, smiling faces to greet us.  The children danced to the beat of the drums and sang songs about how grateful they were to God.  We kicked balls around with the children and they taught us how to wrap strips of colored paper to make beads for necklaces they would sell.  However, when we broke out the boxes of cookies to give out to the children, you could see the desperation on their faces.  These children were so hungry they would pile up on each other to get more cookies.  They couldn’t help themselves.

The Oasis children are a very special group, who are pleasant, thankful, and polite.  One of my friends took Dixon, one of the young boys from Oasis, to the doctor one day, and then out for ice cream and fried chicken.  Dixon saved a piece of chicken and brought it back for his best friend at the orphanage.  It is amazing how well-adjusted, kind, and pleasant Oasis’ children are in spite of such hardship; but seeing the love that the caretakers and Pastor Robert, the in-house manager, have for these children makes it seem plausible.

The government doesn’t support any orphanages in Uganda, so they all rely on private donations.  The head pastor for Oasis travels all over the United States seeking donations for Oasis, but these children are going hungry and living in unsanitary conditions.  I can only speculate on his success in finding donations, but his multiple trips between the United States and Uganda alone are evidence of some level of success.  Regardless of how much he is able to raise, it seems pretty clear that most of the donations are not making their way back to the orphanage.  A dollar goes a very long way in Uganda. For example, the estimated cost of food for fifty children at Sanyu Babies Home, another orphanage, is about $3500 per year.  I was also told stories of church groups who send Oasis hundreds of dollars per month, and still, these children skip meals on a regular basis.

Something doesn’t sit well with me over this fact pattern.  While there is no hard evidence available, it seems clear that there is some degree of misappropriation going on. Corruption, which is such a huge problem in Uganda, rears its ugly head yet again, and this time it is the children who pay.  Unfortunately, none of my contacts in Uganda have found a local group that they would trust to receive donations on behalf of Oasis.  Friends tell me to only give money to people who you know would directly deliver supplies to the orphanage.

Meeting the children of Oasis was one of the best experiences in Uganda, but I left that country so heartbroken knowing that there are so few meaningful ways to help these children from my own country.  This was certainly one of the most inhumane and appalling examples of corruption that I have ever heard of in Uganda, and I hope that the corruption ends soon for the sake of these children.

Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG)

Emily Schneider
Special Contributor, Blog Entry #1

“Go to hell, you go to hell! Never would a first year intern prescribe this medication to someone after only one high blood pressure reading, yet he prescribed it to me and my child died.  And now you are saying he is innocent! He is a murderer and you condone it!”

I pushed forward with the crowd, through the doors and into the courtroom.  It was my third day in India, my second day working at Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), and my first time in an Indian courtroom.  I stood on my tiptoes and craned my neck.  I could see the woman, wearing the traditional, and required, white collar of an advocate, screaming at the judge.

The onlookers around me gasped at her behavior.  The man next to me whispered to his colleague, “She is not right, she has called the judge a murderer indirectly; certainly she needs to see a doctor.”  His audience nodded in agreement.  The judge said something inaudible and soon guards entered the room and pushed through the crowd.  They dragged the woman out as she screamed accusations and insults at the judge, the other attorney, and the crowd.

Court guards forced us to all exit the courtroom and as people milled about in the hall I heard snippets of conversations in English.  It seemed that the consensus was that she was crazy. People whispered that she would go to jail for this.  My supervisor found me in the crowd and explained the woman’s story.  She was an attorney who experienced complications with her pregnancy.  After seeing a doctor, she was prescribed a medication to lower her blood pressure.  She later lost the baby and blamed the doctor because of the blood pressure medication he prescribed.  She then sued him for malpractice and I had just witnessed the hearing.  My supervisor explained that the Chief Judge of the High Court in Delhi was a patient man for allowing her to rant so long.  “He’s in a good mood today, let’s hope it carries into the afternoon for our hearing as well,” she said.

We were in court that day to hear the arguments for a case concerning torture of disabled persons.  In India, there are limited resources available to those with disabilities or families of those with disabilities.  When a child is born with a disability, the family usually abandons them due to lack of resources and they are put in a government-run care facility.

Recently, one of these facilities failed an inspection by the state.  Due to intense media coverage, the facility’s failure was brought to the attention of HRLN.  Between December and January, this care facility logged 19 fatalities due to the atrocious conditions of the home.  Over 700 disabled children lived in a space meant to serve 300 children maximum; and they were assisted by only three care-takers.  HRLN filed a petition with the court in January, and by the time of the first hearing on February 6, more children had died.

At that hearing, the court ordered the care facility to reform and set another hearing to follow up on the matter.  Since February, the care facility has failed to improve and it now houses over 900 children.  The judge, who has a reputation for supporting NGO’s, signed a court order allowing HRLN to visit and inspect the facility.  This was an incredible victory for HRLN because under normal circumstances only the State is allowed to visit or inspect a care facility.

If HRLN conducts inspections and finds after a set timeframe that the facility is not improving, they can bring the matter before the court again.  Both my supervisor and the arguing attorney found this judgment more than satisfactory.  My supervisor was so elated she cautioned me against believing it was always this easy to achieve victory.  I was dumbfounded.  This did not seem like a victory to me. It seemed like a compromise made only by the goodwill of the judge that day.  However, I’m discovering that most causes HRLN takes on are losing ones from the start.  Thus, even a compromise, with the slimmest opportunity of bringing real change, is an improvement.