Museveni Threatens Shut-Down of Opposition Press

All in the Family: senior General Salim Saleh is the brother of Uganda's president - who runs a one party government (IndyMedia.org)

Government Threatens to Close Uganda's Only Independent Newspaper The Daily Monitor

MONITOR TEAM

(Kampala) DAILY Monitor newspaper is facing closure over a story that indicated President Museveni had offered his brother Salim Saleh the new job of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF).

Highly placed sources said yesterday that the government had been forced to resort to this drastic measure following what it considers Daily Monitor's "failure to retract the story and apologise".

The Minister of State for Information, Dr James Nsaba Buturo, neither confirmed nor dismissed the threats of closure."I don‚t know what will happen next," he said. "We had demanded that that you retract the story and apologise, but you have insisted it's credible. We don't think it's credible."

A senior presidential aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was going to be very difficult for Daily Monitor to operate without retracting the story as demanded by the President. "The next decision is his [Museveni's]," the source said.

Sunday Monitor reported on October 13 that Gen. Saleh had turned down the Commander-in-Chief's offer to be the CDF, after which the job was offered to Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, the former army commander under the old UPDF structure.

The paper also reported that Nyakairima was to be sent for a military course in the United States if Saleh had accepted the CDF position.

But the government said in a statement on Sunday that the story was "false and an attempt to malign the President, discredit the UPDF, and undermine the authority of the Chief of Defence Forces."

Daily Monitor ran the full statement yesterday. But the government apparently felt publishing the full statement was not good enough. Interestingly, the Red Pepper, which also published a commentary that carried the same information as Sunday Monitor story, has not been asked to retract it or apologise. The Red Pepper reported that a day before announcing the army changes, Museveni had called Nyakairima and told him he would be sending him for a military course abroad. The paper said there had been speculation a day before that Saleh had been appointed CDF.

If the threats are implemented, it will be the second time the government is closing the 13-year old newspaper, and the third time it clamps down on the groups news outlets. In October 2002, the Monitor was closed after publishing a story that said an army helicopter had come down in rebel territory in northern Uganda.