US Embassy Demands Kasese Killings Investigation

The United States Embassy in Kampala has joined Human Rights Watch in calling for an independent and fair investigation into the 2016 killings in Kasese District by the armed forces.

In a sternly worded statement issued just after Human Rights Watch released its report on the massacre that shocked the country, the US embassy said: ‘We again urge the Uganda government to conduct or permit fair & independent investigation to uphold rule of law, give full & factual accounting of events.’

They added: ‘We remain deeply troubled by reported disproportionate use of force by Uganda security officials during November 2016 incidents in Kasese. We are particularly concerned by reports security forces made no effort to remove unarmed people from the site, leading to scores of deaths.’

This comes on the heels of a damning report by Human Rights watch criticizing the conduct of the armed forces in their operation in Kasese and alluding to possible crimes against humanity.

The government yesterday dismissed calls for an independent probe insisting the conduct of the armed forces was legal and justified.

But government spokesman Ofwono Opondo in the government response acknowledged that the government had under reported the number of deaths arising from the operation.

Opondo admitted that 103 people had been killed in the operation contrary to the government’s previous stated death toll of only 62 people. Opondo denied any children were killed in the operation.

But the New York based NGO reported: “Human Rights Watch found evidence, including accounts by confidential sources and medical personnel who witnessed the events, that security officials had misrepresented the number of people killed and eliminated evidence of the children’s deaths.”