The Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that rights groups were facing increased harassment and intimidation from government officials, consequently making it difficult for civil society groups to freely conduct their work in Uganda.

Describing the intimidation the HRW noted that closure of meetings, reprimands, demands for apologies or retractions, threats, harassment and physical violence were prevalent tactics that government officials had been using to interfere with the work of civil society groups.

The HRW recognised that civil society actors working on governance, human rights, land and oil were most susceptible to intimidation, because the regime perceived them “as threatening to undermine the regime’s political and financial interests.”

The executive director of the Uganda government media centre, Fred Opolot, who had not read the HRW report, told Reuters that the report’s claims of intimidation were unsubstantiated and that the civil society were allowed to work freely, “as long as they did the right things”.

In May the British Charity, Oxfam, were accused of bringing disrepute to the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, following the publishing of a report that detailed land grabs by the government in alliance with a foreign company.  Museveni’s government responded to the report by threatening to eject the charity unless it withdrew its accusations and apologised.