Uganda’s increase in arms import during the COVID-19 pandemic and the road to grave human rights abuses during 2021 elections
Introduction
In TASSC’s recent report, Torture in Uganda-The Tragic History, Impact, and Current Reality under the Museveni Regime, we have demonstrated that the Ugandan government’s cooperation in multinational initiatives has allowed the Museveni regime considerable support from the U.S. and other nations. But it is increasingly obvious that the cost of that cooperation is the regime’s confidence that it can, without meaningful consequences, torture, kill, and repress citizens who dare to challenge its inhumanity. Museveni’s brutality has been ignored for decades, and the regime’s current, brazen violence against its citizens as they seek simply to participate in democratic processes demands a strong international response. And in that report, we have demonstrated the role of the Ugandan Army and its branches, in citizens’ torture, killings, and other human rights abuses. According to a recent report from SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), titled: World Military Spending Rises to almost $2 trillion in 2020, “Military expenditure in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 3.4 percent in 2020 to reach $18.5 billion. The biggest increases in spending were made by Chad (+31 percent), Mali (+22 percent), Mauritania (+23 percent) and Nigeria (+29 percent), all in the Sahel region, as well as Uganda (+46 percent)”[1]
This military spending increase in Uganda in 2020 (+46%) happened in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, does this have something to do with the plans of President Museveni to boost repression of the opposition during 2021 elections?
Increase in arms imports in USD
By: Leonce Byimana