Lewis Rubongoya, Secretary General of the National Unity Platform (NUP), has dismissed Uganda Human Rights Commission chairperson Miriam Wangadya’s remarks regarding NUP kidnapped followers being non-existent as un serious and very regrettable.
On January 8, 2024, Wangadya revealed that a significant portion of the Kampala budget allocated to the Commission was dedicated to the search for non-existent missing NUP supporters.
In an interview with our reporter at the party headquarters in Makerere Kavule, Rubongoya said that he wasn’t surprised that Wangadya continues to make utterances such as “non-existent” when many families continue to grieve.
“This is very serious, and Wangadya should be charged with abetting crime. We have families that have come before the public crying and asking for help to find their lost and unaccounted-for family members, and it’s very unfortunate that someone like Wangadya continues to mock Ugandans with such utterances,” Rubongoya said.
“Many victims have openly come out, and many media houses have visited these grieving families and told their stories to the general public. We have presented to you police letters and evidence of arrest by security agencies, which Wangadya already knows, but she just chooses to play politics and ignore the facts,” Rubongoya added.
The National Unity Platform party has in the past months put the government of Uganda under pressure to produce over 18 party supporters who are still unaccounted for and are allegedly under the custody of different security agencies.
In October 2023, opposition members stormed out of parliament in solidarity after tasking the government to give accountability of NUP supporters who have been missing since and after the 2021 general elections.
According to the opposition, many of their supporters were kidnapped, others killed, and others are still under arrest and have never been produced in court.
The allegations had been presented before the Uganda Human Rights Commission, chaired by Miriam Wangadya, which later did investigations into the alleged case of missing persons and presented its findings before parliament, which indicated that there were no missing persons as alleged by NUP leaders.
