National Unity Platform (NUP) president Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu alias Bobi Wine has asked the European Union (EU) to re-evaluate its partnership with Uganda, putting focus on the citizens and not government.
Kyagulanyi said that by funding government, the EU is indirectly sponsoring torture in the country because government uses the donations and funds they receive to mistreat ordinary people.
The NUP president was speaking at the fifth Annual Africa Week Conference in Brussels, Belgium.
“The idea from the European Union and the entire international community would be to forster poverty alleviation, enhancement of government institutions and not to fund governments which at the end torture ordinary people,” Kyagulanyi said.
The former presidential candidate said that he longs to see international partnerships with African States standing with victims of torture.
“We call upon the EU to set real democracy and observance of the rule of law as a precondition for giving support to Uganda,” Kyagulanyi stressed.
The fifth Annual Africa Week Conference is organised by the European Parliament and it seeks to bring together all EU partners within Africa and Europe to discuss matters of global concern.
The conference also seeks to strengthen democracy and human rights to enable sustainable economic and human developments.
Kyagulanyi, according to documents seen by Nile Post was invited as a keynote speaker at this year’s edition of the conference.
His invitation comes at a time when one of his party’s coordinators for Kasese district, Samuel Masereka, has become the latest face of government brutality, having come out of detention early this month with visible wounds and marks of torture.
Critical novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is also another victim, whose wounds and marks of torture sparked off debate in the country’s news circles and Parliament.
The EU came out strongly in a statement to condemn all acts of torture saying that such undermine Uganda’s constitution and paint a bad picture to the government.
In his speech while addressing the EU Parliament in Brussels, Kyagulanyi said that although they appreciate the statements from EU, the EU needs to do more than just writing letters.
“The torture in my country does not just need EU to issue a statement but to do more. We are in a country where people are killed for opposing government,” Kyagulanyi noted.
Kyagulanyi was in company of the NUP Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya, his wife Barbara Itungo Kyagulanyi and music partner Nubian Li.
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