A spate of unsolved murders of young women in Uganda is putting rare public pressure on a police force long accused by opposition politicians of spending more time suppressing political dissent than tackling crime.
Widespread media coverage of the appearance of 20 corpses beside roadsides south of the capital since May reflects public anger with police for repeatedly saying they have arrested the perpetrators, only for another body to be discovered.
“It’s terrifying,” Susan Kabul, 29, said while standing near the garbage-littered bank of a drainage channel where the latest murder victim was discovered. “The police need to tell us who is slaughtering people like this.”
The government has defended the police, and police say they have arrested 30 suspects and charged 13 of them, listing possible motives ranging from domestic rows through sexual abuse to ritual murder linked to human sacrifice.
“Ritual killing is one of the motives that we suspect, we also think there might cases of jilted lovers,” police spokesman Asan Kasingye said by telephone. “Other theories might come up as investigations progress.”
There have been occasional individual cases of alleged ritual murder in the east African nation, but this is the first time there has been such a large number of people killed in similar circumstances in the same area.
In a nod to the public outrage, lawmakers stopped work for two days this week after the 20th body was found, saying ministers had failed to appear before the legislature over the killings in three districts on the outer edge of Kampala.
Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo accused them of populism.
“They spoke as if the government is doing nothing,” Opondo said. “They should leave police to work without pressure.”
The legislature is dominated by supporters of longstanding Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
The constitution was changed in 2005 to remove a two-term limit, allowing him to extend his rule, and parliament is discussing removing an age cap. His son is a major general and powerful presidential adviser.
Opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who contends that Museveni stole his victory in last year’s election, has been charged with treason. Police often break up opposition rallies with teargas, beatings or detentions.
The opposition and rights activists have long accused security forces of neglecting crime to focus on political control.
“Police can’t secure women in a small area — all the attention is on politics, on who is criticizing Museveni,” said Sarah Birete of the Centre for Constitutional Governance.
Opondo said the police were doing a good job.
“Some people start disguised as political activists and degenerate to criminals, I think they are unhappy that the police is on their back,” he said. “The police is right to focus on all forms of crime that can cause insecurity.”
Uganda is ranked among the world’s most corrupt nations by watchdog Transparency International.
The Ugandan government’s inspector general said in a 2014 report that the police force was “the most corrupt public institution in the country,” noting that crimes were rarely investigated.
In Wakiso, the district where most of the victims have been found, few residents have faith that the killings are likely to stop.
“I have stopped moving about at night. He could be a serial killer. I don’t know where he will strike next,” said Deo Busulwa, who lives nearby the location of the latest grisly discovery, of mother-of-two Maria Nabilawa.
Many residents suspect the victims are killed elsewhere and the bodies dumped.
Kasingye said the police had arrested Nabilawa’s husband in connection with her killing.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.