Over the past months, a number of Ugandans have been rounded up by unidentified people who relatives of the victims suspect to be security operatives and many of these have not yet been returned to their families nor produced in the courts of law.
According to National Unity Platform (NUP) leadership, over 458 people have been missing and there whereabouts unknown. However, NUP has only produced a list of 243 people of the 458 people that they claim are missing.
NUP began registering people who have disappeared, most of them its supporters, last November upon petitions by families following the two-day protests in that month when security forces shot dead 54 civilians.
On February 24, the Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga ordered the government to table the list of citizens it is holding incommunicado, but Gen Odongo was again a no-show in the House yesterday, prompting the Speaker to permit any MP with particulars of missing persons to produce them in Parliament.
Last Friday NUP held prayers for the missing people at its head offices in Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb, and those already charged in court and remanded.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga on Tuesday lost her patience with government over its delay to respond to a directive by Parliament to table the list of missing persons.
Ms Kadaga said the government will be held accountable for the whereabouts of the missing persons since they have failed to make the list public.
“Since we resumed (the plenary session), there have been complaints about missing persons. The President directed those who have them to publish the list,” the Speaker said.
She added: “In absence of that (list), I want to ask these members who have a list of missing people to produce it here so that we can make the government to account.”
