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UCC orders Daily Monitor to shut website

UCC’ top brass led by Mutabazi. Mutabazi has written to Daily Monitor

Kampala, Uganda | AFP |  Uganda’s communications regulator on Wednesday ordered the country’s main independent newspaper the Daily Monitor to shut down its website.

In a letter to the newspaper’s managing director, the head of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Godfrey Mutabazi, said the Daily Monitor had failed to register under data communications regulations introduced in 2018.

It accused the newspaper’s parent company, Monitor Publications Limited, of providing an online news service illegally.

UCC spokesman Ibrahim Bbossa told AFP the registration issue came to light during an investigation into a complaint over an article which was lodged by parliamentary speaker Rebecca Kadaga.

The Daily Monitor website had on Monday reported on a legal case launched last month by a “witch doctor” who alleged that almost 30 years ago, Kadaga had used the traditional healer’s services to boost her political career, but had never paid him the agreed fee.

According to Bbossa, Kadaga’s office filed a complaint alleging that the Daily Monitor had published “fake news” about her with the matter being investigated under a colonial-era defamation statute.

In his letter, Mutabazi said that a preliminary investigation had shown that Monitor Publications “actively runs an online newspaper platform, which falls within the scope of the data communications services, provision of which requires one to obtain an authorisation… which Monitor Publications has never applied for.”

As a result, the letter ordered the paper to “immediately suspend any further provision of online data communications services (online newspaper services) until Monitor Publications has applied for and obtained the requisite authorisation.”

Bbossa said the media registration regulations were necessary because the government needed to know “who was operating and where they were operating in case of a complaint against them.”

But he denied the move against the Daily Monitor’s website was an attempt to silence undesirable coverage of the Speaker who is a prominent member of the ruling party of longtime President Yoweri Museveni.

The Ugandan government has previously targeted the Daily Monitor for publishing articles seen as critical of the authorities.

In 2013 the newspaper was closed for 11 days in an incident known as the “Monitor siege” after it published details of an alleged plan for Museveni’s son to inherit the presidency.

3 comments

  1. let’s join hands and cancel the curvy women contest. This contest is degrading women and we must stop it, Please tap on the link and sign the petition. is this the kind of country we want for our future generations? I know we can do this, please join the struggle.Is this the only way we can promote our tourism sector? Is that how we want our sisters, mothers, aunties, relatives potrayed, are you going to fold your hands and say it doesn’t concern you,i know you have a girl child, either a sister or a friend or a neighbour, or your boss,or even your mother, is that how you want society to view her, to degrade her? Say No To this contest. *follow the link below*
    https://www.change.org/p/government-ministry-of-tourism-cancel-the-curvy-women-contest-in-uganda?recruiter=934638011&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_show

    #endfgm
    #womenmatter
    #monitorupdates
    #endcurvywomencontest

  2. In Uganda we have got a good number of tourism sites i.e lakes, rivers, mountains, forests, game parks, interesting features like the Nyero Rock painting in Tororo, museaums to mention but a few, such things have given a step forward of Uganda in terms of tourism. Instead of turning to women, let the government first think about encouraging people to embrace our tourism sector for the country to develop. Let it not be the choice to include such hoping to develope the sector. In a nutshell, it shows how baberic and premitive we shall be to embrace every nonsense from the whites. Curvy women contest should stop.

  3. UGANDA HAVE BEAUTIFUL NATURAL PROPERTY,.. visit me

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