20100816
reuters

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A Ugandan member of parliament and a human rights campaigner on Monday accused government troops of torturing and killing civilians as part of a disarmament exercise in a remote and lawless region.

The Karamoja region is the least developed part of Uganda and is plagued by lawlessness, disease, hunger and a gun culture among tribes who steal each other's cattle.

The area's member of parliament, Francis Adamson Kiyonga told Reuters on Monday a special forces unit based at Tapach in Moroto district and commanded by President Yoweri Museveni's son, Keinerugaba Muhoozi, was assigned to the area.

The troops had resorted to killing civilians and using cruel methods to force people to confess to possessing guns, he said.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Muhoozi is responsible as a commander of this notorious unit of elite forces," Kiyonga said.

"We have testimonies of civilians who have had their eyes pricked and their bodies burnt with hot metal objects to force them to confess that they have guns when in fact they don't."

The allegations have been widely reported in the Ugandan media but a military spokesman denied that Muhoozi's soldiers had committed widespread atrocities in Karamoja.

However, James Apollo, a project officer at Pokot Zonal Integrated Development Programme, a church-founded non-governmental organisation that operates in Karamoja, said there had been torture of civilians by soldiers who tried to castrate one man.

"In another incident soldiers put a panga (long-bladed knife) in fire until it was red hot and then put it on a man's body, I have evidence on all these crimes," Apollo said.