The East African   Nairobi

Death Penalty: Ugandans Want It Abolished

Edward Ojulu

 Human-rights groups in Uganda have stepped up their campaign against the death penalty, with several of them submitting strong memoranda to the Constitution Review Commission urging for its removal from the statute books.

 The commission, which is expected to wind up business mid next year, is collecting public views on a number of laws, including the death penalty, which the government has recommended for review.

 The anti-death penalty campaigners want the sentence substituted with long jail terms such as life imprisonment to give the offenders and the offended offended a chance to forgive."

 They say death, as a penalty had after all not deterred people from committing capital offences. Rape, defilement, murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and treason are some of the offences punishable by death in Uganda.

 The Constitutional Review Commission is finalising its report that is expected to determine the fate of the death penalty in the country. Some 271 convicts are reportedly on the death row, including a minister in former president Milton Obote's second government, Chris Rwakasisi.

 The Commission was formed in 2000 and mandated to propose changes to some number of laws, including the death penalty.

 John Matovu, the president of the Law Society of Uganda, a grouping of private sector legal practitioners, says that in most cases accused persons are the poor who cannot afford to pay for legal representation.

 "We now say no to the death sentence because we think it is a way of revenge. In some cases people are convicted mistakenly, on false police evidence and without proper legal representation," Mr Matovu said.

 The latest executions ordered by a non-military court, in which 28 convicts were hanged, were carried out in April, 1999.

 In March this year, a military field court martial, whose verdict cannot be appealed, tried and executed two soldiers for the alleged murder of and Irish priest, Reverend O'Toole Declan in Karamoja district in northern Uganda.

 Religious leaders, international human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also urged the Uganda government to do away with the death sentence.

 Campaigners against the death penalty may, however, face an uphill task in pressing for changes in the laws of the country. Last year, Cabinet upheld the death penalty for defilers and rapists against a recommendation by the Law Review Commission.

 Although women rights activists agitating for more punitive laws to deter incidence of rape and defilement welcomed the decision, campaigners against the death penalty want the sentence reduced to life imprisonment.

 They also want the age of consent now at 18 years reduced to 16.

 The death penalty has been on the statute books inherited at independence from the British colonialists in 1962, but were also upheld by makers of the country's new constitution enacted in October 1995.

 But an official of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative said the current debate on the death penalty was healthy and demonstrated the will to change the law.

 "This is an indication that there is a political will to have this dehumanising law scrapped," added an official of the Joint Christian Council - a church-based non-government organisation groups all Christian churches in Uganda.

 Human rights activists have assembled a committee comprising academicians and leading religious leaders to argue the case against the application of death as a penalty.

 A spokesman for the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), told The EastAfrican that, while the Commission has not yet submitted any views to the Constitution Review Commission with regard to the death penalty, some of the commissioners want it abolished for offences such as rape and treason.

 He said that, while there was no common position on the issue among members of the commission, a view that cut across is that the death penalty should be abolished for sexual offences like rape and defilement, and political offences like treason and desertion from the army.

 It should, however, be retained for offences like murder and aggravated robbery.

 "The Commission would wish to see a total abolition of the death penalty through a gradual process after having a through debate within the public," he said Mr Robert Kirenga, UHRC spokesman.

 Suspected terrorists paraded at the Kampala Conference in 1999. Human rights campaigners in Uganda want the death penalty reduced to life imprisonment.