Uganda Media Outlet Appeals Landmark Defamation Ruling

Kampala, Jan 8 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Jan, 2023 ) :An independent Ugandan media house said Sunday it is appealing to the country's Supreme Court against a controversial damages ruling for defaming a senior government official over a mega corruption case.

Court of Appeal judges last week ordered Monitor Publications to pay $120,000 in damages to Pius Bigirimana over a string of articles published from 2012 to 2015, believed to be the biggest such financial ruling against the media in Uganda.

The stories related to a corruption scandal which saw $40 million stolen from a project to rehabilitate northern Uganda after a bloody insurgency waged by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of fugitive warlord Joseph Kony against President Yoweri Museveni.

Lead appeal court judge Elizabeth Musoke said Thursday that the Monitor had portrayed Bigirimana, a permanent secretary in the prime minister's office at the time the embezzlement became public, as "a corrupt, deceitful and untouchable civil servant".

Bigirimana has never been charged and veteran leader Museveni has described him as a whistleblower in the case rather than a culprit.

Another senior official, Godfrey Kazinda, was convicted in September 2021 of stealing $26.4 million donated by the governments of Denmark, Ireland and Sweden for the northern Uganda project and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The state also confiscated a million-dollar 20-room mansion from Kazinda, as well as four luxury sports cars and about $274,000 in cash.

In a two-to-one ruling, the appeal court said Bigirimana was entitled to 450 million Ugandan shillings ($120,000) in compensatory and punitive damages, upholding a previous order by the high court.

"I find that the (Monitor) in publishing the 15 defamatory stories about (Bigirimana) for a prolonged period of three years acted in disregard of his rights and their actions warranted punishment," Musoke said.

- 'Undermines work of journalists' - Monitor Publications is a private media house which has often had run-ins with the government and has in the past been branded an "enemy publication" by Museveni.

"In stripping away the protection of qualified privilege and fair comment, the ruling undermines the ability of journalists to report about things people in power are doing," Monitor Publications head of editorial policy, Daniel Kalinaki said in statement Sunday.

"We believe the Supreme Court judges will do the right thing for the country, its constitution, and its citizens." Kalinaki said the ruling was a further a threat to media in Uganda, where censorship, arrests of journalists and their harassment by security forces is commonplace.

Robert Sempala of the Uganda Human Rights Network For Journalists described the decision "as an attack on media" and "must be challenged in courts of law".

The dissenting judge, Muzamir Kibeedi, had said the court should not make judgments "whose effect is to kill media houses and by extension reduce the space for media freedom and expression in the country".

The Monitor had defended its reports, saying they were in the public interest in the fight against corruption, and were not spiteful, malicious, odious, unprofessional and defamatory as claimed by Bigirimana.

The outlet was closed down by the government in 2013 for more than one week after publishing a letter by a former intelligence boss saying Museveni was grooming his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba to succeed him and that anyone opposing his plans risked elimination.

The LRA was founded three decades ago by former Catholic altar boy and self-styled prophet Kony, who launched a bloody rebellion against Museveni in northern Uganda.

Its bid to set up a state based on the Bible's Ten Commandments killed more than 100,000 people and saw 60,000 children abducted, spreading to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.