Uganda: Another journalist killed
By Nangayi Guyson in Kampala Uganda – Another Ugandan journalist who has been working as news presenter for the Seventh Day Adventist radio station in Uganda has been beaten and killed by an unidentified assailants.
Dickson Ssentongo has been working for Prime Radio in Mukono district, central Uganda as a Luganda language news presenter but he was attacked on Monday morning on his way to work.
Assailants beat Ssentongo with metal bars and dragged him into a nearby cassava field, local journalists told CPJ. He was the second journalist murdered in three days in Uganda after freelance journalist Paul Kiggundu who was killed by motorcycle taxi drivers On Saturday.
Ssentongo was attacked at 5 a.m. while trying to catch a bus in Nantabulirirwa village, 43 miles (70 kilometers) from the Kireka-based Prime Radio station, News Editor Katongole Kiwanuka told CPJ. He said an unidentified witness had called the station and described what had happened. A local farmer found Ssentongo alive at 9 a.m., the Ugandan Human Rights Journalists Network reported, and he was rushed to Mulago Hospital, where he died several hours later.
Ssentongo routinely read the 7 a.m. news, Kiwanuka said. He was also running for a position in the Democratic Party, one of the leading opposition parties to the ruling National Resistance Movement.
“CPJ sends its condolences and sympathies to the family and colleagues of Dickson Ssentongo,” CPJ’s East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes said. “Authorities must do their utmost to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice, especially at this politically sensitive time in the lead-up to national elections.”
