Uganda’s military chief, who is also the president’s son, said on Sunday he had ordered the closure of two \u200bleading media outlets, declaring that he did “not believe in \u200ca free press”.<\/p>\n
Muhoozi Kainerugaba said the Daily Monitor – Uganda’s largest independent daily newspaper – and NTV Uganda, one of the country’s largest private broadcasters, would “not re-open \u200bwithout my permission”.<\/p>\n
“In Uganda, I do not believe in \u200ba free press! The press should be guided by cadres \u2060of the revolution,” Kainerugaba wrote in a series of posts \u200bon the X platform.<\/p>\n
He did not give specific reasons for closing \u200bthe media outlets, both of which are owned by Nation Media Group (NMG), a media conglomerate headquartered in Kenya and listed on the Nairobi stock exchange.<\/p>\n
The \u200bDaily Monitor reported on Sunday that military personnel had been deployed \u200bat NMG’s premises in the capital, Kampala, and that staff were being prevented \u200cfrom \u2060leaving or entering the premises.<\/p>\n
NTV Uganda and other NMG TV and radio broadcasters in the country were all down as of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Ugandan government spokesperson Alan Kasujja did not immediately respond to \u200ba Reuters request \u200bfor comment.<\/p>\n
Susan Nsibirwa, \u2060managing director for NMG in Uganda, said she did not have an immediate comment.<\/p>\n
Kainerugaba, who has \u200bbeen touted as a possible successor to his ageing \u200bfather, \u2060President Yoweri Museveni, is well known for his controversial social media posts including threats to behead the leading opposition leader Bobi Wine.<\/p>\n
In 2013, \u2060the \u200bgovernment of Museveni, who has ruled the \u200bcountry since 1986,\u00a0shut down\u00a0the Daily Monitor for 10 days over reports regarding his \u200bsuccession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uganda’s military chief, who is also the president’s son, said on Sunday he had ordered the closure of two \u200bleading media outlets, declaring that he did “not believe in \u200ca free press”. Muhoozi Kainerugaba said the Daily Monitor – Uganda’s largest independent daily newspaper – and NTV Uganda, one of the country’s largest private broadcasters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11209,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"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":[29,2362,33],"tags":[461,132],"class_list":["post-21229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-muhoozi-kainerugaba","tag-uganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21230,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions\/21230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}