Uganda’s President Yoweri \u200cMuseveni signed into law a contentious measure to curb foreign influence after parliament scaled back provisions that had drawn criticism from financial institutions over potentially hampering remittances and development work.<\/p>\n
The bill \u200bcriminalises promotion of the “interests of a foreigner against the interests of Uganda” \u200band bans anyone working on behalf of foreign interests from developing \u2060or implementing policy without government approval.<\/p>\n
Rights groups have said that such broad \u200blanguage would allow the government to criminalise just about any form of political opposition. \u200bThe government has accused critics of exaggerating the bill’s impact.<\/p>\n
Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, has regularly decried outside influence in Uganda, accusing domestic political rivals of receiving funding \u200bfrom abroad.<\/p>\n
His office announced late on Sunday that he had signed the\u00a0“Protection of \u200bSovereignty”\u00a0bill, which parliament had adopted on May 5. Penalties for violations include up to 10 \u200cyears \u2060in prison and steep cash fines.<\/p>\n
The final legislation softened several earlier provisions that had been criticised by economic institutions.<\/p>\n
One that required any Ugandan receiving money from abroad to register as a foreign agent and disclose incoming funds was amended to apply \u200bonly to people \u200breceiving funds for \u2060political purposes that advance foreign interests.<\/p>\n
Remittances from Ugandans living abroad are an important source of foreign exchange for the east \u200bAfrica nation.<\/p>\n
Central Bank governor Michael Atingi-Ego had warned last month that \u200bthe \u2060law could diminish financial flows into Uganda and risked running down foreign exchange reserves, in a situation he called an “economic disaster for our country”.<\/p>\n
The World Bank also criticised the \u2060earlier \u200bproposal, saying it could expose to criminal liability \u200ba broad range of “routine development activities”.<\/p>\n
Neither the Central Bank nor the World Bank have commented on the \u200bamendments to the original bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uganda’s President Yoweri \u200cMuseveni signed into law a contentious measure to curb foreign influence after parliament scaled back provisions that had drawn criticism from financial institutions over potentially hampering remittances and development work. The bill \u200bcriminalises promotion of the “interests of a foreigner against the interests of Uganda” \u200band bans anyone working on behalf of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362,33],"tags":[1438,3765,132,462],"class_list":["post-20906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","category-politics","tag-central-bank","tag-michael-atingi-ego","tag-uganda","tag-yoweri-museveni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20907,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906\/revisions\/20907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}