“Forced disappearances, abductions, arrests by whatever has been done by the military and many of them happened here in the Central and I find it surprising that the Commission now chose to go and visit the detention facility in Gulu yet here, which is the epicentre of all this here in Buganda, here in the Central, you didn’t visit,” said MP Odur.
The Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) has come under scrutiny over its proposal to buy 40 portraits of the President in 2025/26 financial year, with MP Jonathan Odur (Erute South) wondering if this is part of the Commission’s prediction that Uganda will have a new President in 2026 or if the current portraits aren’t depictive enough of the looks of the current President.
Odur raised the concern during the meeting held between the Parliamentary Legal Committee and the commission who had appeared to defend their 2025/26 Ministerial Policy Statement, where he castigated the Commission for veering off their constitutional mandate of guaranteeing rights of all people in Uganda and instead focusing on issues like procuring presidential portraits.
“Forced disappearances, abductions, arrests by whatever has been done by the military and many of them happened here in the Central and I find it surprising that the Commission now chose to go and visit the detention facility in Gulu yet here, which is the epicentre of all this here in Buganda, here in the Central, you didn’t visit. And if you look at the cases of people who have been taken to court and others have been dumped in many places, they have been tortured. Could we have an explanation, why the Commission all of a sudden found to run away from the core issue of visiting the Military detention centres?” Odur argued.
However, the UHRC chairperson, Mariam Wangadya while addressing the media said: “Most Ugandans appreciate our work. You have seen our human rights courts sitting in different parts of the country to give justice to victims of human rights abuse…”.
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