General Yoweri Museveni has ruled Uganda for more than 25 years. Since taking power in a 1986 military coup, he has stacked this Central African country's voting commission with his henchmen and stolen its elections. Having abolished presidential term limits in 2005 in a sham referendum, he plans to rule for life, and is grooming his son for succession.
Museveni has used the state treasury to build a climate of fear through a security apparatus that persecutes dissidents and critics with imprisonment, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. He has reduced the country's parliament to a rubber-stamp body, censored the nation's media, and militarized its civil institutions.
To distract his countrymen, Museveni has fanned the flames of homophobia in Uganda to the point of encouraging legislation that would penalize homosexuality with execution. By rallying the public against "the homosexual threat" with one hand, he is able to free his other hand to continue consolidating his repressive rule. Museveni is waging a war on Uganda's gay community and its human rights activists.
Reports from groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm the country's descent into authoritarianism. According to British journalist Peter Tatchell, today's Uganda is, "in effect, a constitutional dictatorship," and Museveni is "the new Robert Mugabe."
Most readers may have heard a very different story: one about how Museveni's "strong leadership" has brought stability, economic growth, and a successful HIV/AIDS policy to war-torn Uganda. Indeed, Bill Clinton once lauded him as the head of a "new breed" of African leaders. As the Economist noted, Museveni has been "kindly treated" by the international media.
In large part, Museveni's transgressions have continued to be downplayed because he took power in the wake of Idi Amin's butchery and disastrous civil war. But the main reason Museveni has escaped criticism is that he enjoys an excellent public relations service.
Dictators like Museveni often hire PR firms to whitewash their records. These companies, mostly based in the U.S. and Europe, specialize in distracting the public from evidence of human-rights violations with glowing rhetoric about stability, economic growth, and commitments to help the poor. Their propaganda finds its way into sources that are deemed reliable by many journalists, from articles in respectable news outlets to citizen media like Wikipedia.
Examples of firms that whitewash the human-rights violations of despotic regimes include Bell Pottinger (for Egypt's Hosni Mubarak), Qorvis Communications (for Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang), Brown Lloyd James (for Libya's Muammar Gaddafi), and Hill & Knowlton, which has made a small fortune working for Yoweri Museveni and has offices in every major world capital.
When companies are exposed or criticized for their activities, they respond that their associations with these regimes are "limited engagements" lasting only a few months or that their assignments have to do exclusively with "tourism" or "economic progress." If the true nature and extent of their work is revealed, they say that they are consultants helping to create "economic opportunity," providing a guiding hand to governments as they seek to improve the lives of their country's poor.
On its webpage, Hill & Knowlton claims that "since becoming president in 1986, Yoweri Museveni has introduced democratic reforms and has been credited with substantially improving human rights."
This couldn't be farther from the truth about Uganda, where political opponents disappear, where journalists are arrested for criticizing the government, and where any comprehensive human rights report contains appalling anecdotes and disturbing analysis about a country where the judiciary has very little independence and where the regime has very little respect for the rule of law.
An example of effective media manipulation is how the Hill & Knowlton quote provided above from their webpage can be found word-for-word in the BBC country profile of Uganda. From there, this mendacious fantasy has spread like wildfire (Go ahead, Google the quotation).
PR agents try to alter the public perception of reality, distracting us from human-rights violations so that deals and foreign aid can flow faster and in larger quantities (usually into Swiss bank accounts) -- while the PR agents themselves are rewarded handsomely.
25 years ago, upon the death of Bergen University professor Thorolf Rafto, a prize was created to honor his lifetime commitment to human rights. Professor Rafto began to pursue human-rights work after reading Vladimir V. Tchernavin's I Speak for the Silent Prisoners of the Soviets. He organized student protests against the Gulag and devoted the rest of his life to individual rights. The 2011 Rafto Prize laureate is Ugandan individual-rights activist Frank Mugisha. He is recognized at a ceremony here in Bergen for standing up against Museveni's scapegoating campaign against Uganda's community of sexual minorities.
Not being globally advertised, the Rafto Prize is not well known beyond a small but significant set of public intellectuals and policy institutions. But it has the distinction of having been awarded more than once to people who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Aung San Suu Kyi, Shirin Ebadi, José Manuel Ramos-Horta, and Kim Dae-jung were all presented with the Rafto Prize years before they were recognized by the Nobel Institute.
The Rafto Prize was first given in 1986 -- a quarter century ago. That is how long Museveni has treated Uganda as his personal fiefdom and violated the human rights of millions. Perhaps Hill & Knowlton will recognize the 25th anniversary of the Rafto Prize by doing some pro bono work for human rights defenders like Frank Mugisha.
Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Museveni has also been actively involved in the Congo wars ever since coming to power, hasn't he?
And he's been smarter than Mugabe, enjoying the support of the West and its corporations and not biting the hand that feeds him.
You also portray this as a stalinist state propped up by soviet style propaganda - not true. Yes, the recent elections were not "free and fair", mostly because of the use of state resources. Yes, they harass opposition - but this isn't North Korea or Zimbabwe. From most people's analysis, if Museveni had decided to leave in 2005 (instead of changing the constitution to stay) he would have been the next Mandela. Sad to see personal ambition could lead him to destroy everything he built. The west should exert more pressure on him to step aside.
Now, final point which you don't mention. He receives intense support from the west because of his sending 5000 soldiers to Somalia as part of AMISOM. While he keeps Ugandan soldiers in Mogadishu, he's untouchable. He knows that.
However, having lived in Uganda surely you can confirm that Museveni: 1) is a ruthless thug who pursues those who disagree; 2) steals elections, degrading the concept of “democracy” there into elected authoritarianism; 3) is irrepressibly corrupt; 4) has militarized the country’s institutions and suffocated civil society; and 5) “looks good” because his 25-year long dictatorship was preceded by the dictatorship of Idi Amin and a horrific civil war.
What characteristic about Museveni, or his rule, are you defending? Are you suggesting that because the Ugandan economy has improved over the last two-and-a-half decades, that Museveni is desirable?
As for the comparison you make with Nelson Mandela: Mandela didn’t spend 25 years in power, he spent 26 years in prison and served one term as president, not a quarter century. Museveni is more like Mugabe, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, or Putin: elected thugs who treat their countries like personal fiefdoms, care not for individual rights, and wish to rule for life. Ugandans deserve better.
Now, to the finer point, I do acknowledge that Museveni riggs elections, and is very corrupt. Militarization of the country's institutions not so much. I worked extensively with lots of people from supreme court justices all the way to ministers and - again - this is not a stalinist state.
On the other side, like I said, I think that Museveni should move on. Should he have left office in 2005 he would be heralded as a great man. Should he destroy his own country as he seeks to rule again in 2016 it will be a tragedy. We should thank him for his service and encourage him to move on.