Human-rights groups in Uganda stepped up their campaign...

Human-rights groups in Uganda stepped up their campaign against the death penalty, with several of them submitting strong memoranda to the Constitution Review Commission urging for its removal from the statute books.
The commission, which is expected to wind up business mid next year, is collecting public views on a number of laws, including the death penalty, which the government has recommended for review.
The anti-death penalty campaigners want the sentence substituted with long jail terms such as life imprisonment to give the offenders and the offended [sic] "a chance to forgive."
They say death, as a penalty had after all not deterred people from committing capital offences. Rape, defilement, murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and treason are some of the offences punishable by death in Uganda.
The Constitutional Review Commission is finalising its report that is expected to determine the fate of the death penalty in the country. Some 271 convicts are reportedly on the death row.
The Commission was formed in 2000 and mandated to propose changes to some number of laws, including the death penalty.
John Matovu, the president of the Law Society of Uganda, a grouping of private sector legal practitioners, says that in most cases accused persons are the poor who cannot afford to pay for legal representation.
"We now say no to the death sentence because we think it is a way of revenge. In some cases people are convicted mistakenly, on false police evidence and without proper legal representation," Matovu said.
The latest executions ordered by a non-military court, in which 28 convicts were hanged, were carried out in April, 1999. In March, a military field court martial, whose verdict cannot be appealed, tried and executed two soldiers for the alleged murder of and Irish priest, Reverend Declan O'Toole in Karamoja district.
Campaigners against the death penalty may, however, face an uphill task in pressing for changes in the laws of the country. In 2001, Cabinet upheld the death penalty for defilers and rapists against a recommendation by the Law Review Commission.
Women rights activists agitating for more punitive laws to deter incidence of rape and defilement welcomed the decision.
The death penalty has been on the statute books inherited from the British colonialists, but was also upheld by makers of the country's new constitution enacted in October 1995.
An official of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative said the current debate on death penalty was healthy and demonstrated the will to change the law.
"This is an indication that there is a political will to have this dehumanising law scrapped," added an official of the Joint Christian Council - a church-based non-government organisation that groups all Christian churches in Uganda.
Human rights activists have assembled a committee comprising academicians and leading religious leaders to argue the case against the application of death as a penalty.
A spokesman for the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), told The East African that, while the Commission has not yet submitted any views to the Constitution Review Commission with regard to the death penalty, some of the commissioners want it abolished for offences such as rape and treason.
He said that, while there was no common position on the issue among members of the commission, a view that cut across is that the death penalty should be abolished for sexual offences like rape and defilement, and political offences like treason and desertion from the army.
It should, however, be retained for offences like murder and aggravated robbery.
"The Commission would wish to see a total abolition of the death penalty through a gradual process after having a thorough debate within the public," said spokesman Robert Kirenga.