UGANDA, June 5, 2020-- Women journalists in Uganda face online attacks and harassment for investigating and publishing “politically sensitive” content. Political journalists — especially those who cover opposition politics — often experience threats more than any other kind of journalism. But women journalists have it worse because the government believes they are weaker and easily intimidated.

Women journalists face extra psychological harm, breach of privacy, loss of identity, limitation of mobility, censorship, and loss of property as a result of their work, according to a UNESCO study on freedom of expression in Africa published in 2018.According to a Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda 2018 study, 12 percent of women journalists have suffered abuses and violations, including death threats and arrests. 

Three-quarters of women journalists suffered violations at the hands of state agents such as the police, resident district commissioners and other security operatives. This was the case in November 2016 with Ugandan journalist Joy Doreen Biira, who was working at the privately-owned Kenya Television Network (KTN) in Kenya.Upon Biira’s return, Ugandan security forces clashed with members of the traditional Rwenzururu kingdom in the Rwenzori region of western Uganda, and their palace was burned to the ground resulting in 62 deaths. That same day, Biira was arrested and accused of “circulating graphic photos of the aftermath of a deadly battle between security forces and the regional king’s royal guard of the Rwenzururu kingdom … to a widely subscribed WhatsApp group,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Online harassment has become a new form of censorship too and women journalists who experience abuse online rarely see justice and often struggle to have their complaints taken seriously and properly investigated.

In April 2017, Gertrude Tumusiime Uwitware, a news anchor at NTV Uganda, defended Stella Nyanzi, an outspoken professor who criticized the Museveni administration for failing to fulfill a campaign promise to distribute sanitary pads to poor girls. Authorities forced Uwitware to delete her Twitter and Facebook posts with comments in support of Nyanzi. She received threats on Facebook and was then abducted by unknown assailants for at least eight hours, according to a 2017 Uganda human rights report. 

Sexual harassment is another atrocity committed by authorities to intimidate women journalists. Bahati Remmy, a Ugandan journalist who now works in the United States was arrested while broadcasting live on the Ugandan elections of 2016. Police fondled her breasts in the police van, undressed her at the station and exposed her naked body to a camera and later stalked her online. 

Many women journalists in Uganda have stopped reporting stories that are critical of the government because they fear attacks and harassment by the state. Media practitioners have said that government and security agents occasionally call editors and instruct them to “not to publish stories that negatively portray the government.”

CFWIJ strongly condemns such attempts of censorship and abuse by the hands of state officials. Attacks and harassment of women journalists by the state need to stop and access to information, freedom of expression and democracy rights of Ugandan citizens need to be protected.