6,000 want ‘ebimeeza’ ban lifted
Jan 23, 2003
OVER 6,000 people including two Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed a petition asking the Minister of State for Information, Basoga Nsadhu, to revoke the decision that banned open-air radio talk shows popularly known as Ebimeeza.
By Edris Kisambira
OVER 6,000 people including two Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed a petition asking the Minister of State for Information, Basoga Nsadhu, to revoke the decision that banned open-air radio talk shows popularly known as Ebimeeza.
The 300-page petition was scheduled to be delivered to Nsadhu by the chairman of Bimeeza Twekembe Pressure group, Derek Mutema and the co-ordinator, Muwanga Kivumbi, at 3:00pm yesterday.
However, Nsadhu was not in office and the petitioners requested another appointment to formally handover the petition to the minister.
Mutema told journalists at the New Life Bar in Nakulabye that they had consulted experts on the law and discovered that there was no clause in the electronic media statute under which Ebimeeza were stopped.
Ssebuliba Mutumba (Kawempe South MP) and Alintuma Nsambu (Bukoto East) signed the document.
Mutema said businesspeople and local councillors were among those who embossed their signatures.
He said the talk-shows provided what he called one of the most invaluable fora through which the people of Uganda had been channelling their concerns to the authorities.
Mutema said undue restriction and suppression of the people’s rights had in the past occasioned barbarous acts, anarchy and untold suffering in the country.
Nsadhu, through the broadcasting council, banned the talk-shows, saying the operators were only allowed to operate within their gazetted studios and not in bars.
Most of the shows were held in bars around the city.
Mutema said the listeners were not receiving the signals directly from new life bar or the other places where the shows are held as purported by Basoga’s letter, but that the signals were being relayed back to the station before broadcast.
Kivumbi said they had received signatures from Kampala, Wakiso, Mbarara, Jinja and Kayunga districts. Others, he said, were from Masaka, Rakai, Luweero, Mukono and Mubende districts.
It is over a month since the shows were stopped.
Some of the affected radios had initially continued to hold the shows within their premises.
OVER 6,000 people including two Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed a petition asking the Minister of State for Information, Basoga Nsadhu, to revoke the decision that banned open-air radio talk shows popularly known as Ebimeeza.
The 300-page petition was scheduled to be delivered to Nsadhu by the chairman of Bimeeza Twekembe Pressure group, Derek Mutema and the co-ordinator, Muwanga Kivumbi, at 3:00pm yesterday.
However, Nsadhu was not in office and the petitioners requested another appointment to formally handover the petition to the minister.
Mutema told journalists at the New Life Bar in Nakulabye that they had consulted experts on the law and discovered that there was no clause in the electronic media statute under which Ebimeeza were stopped.
Ssebuliba Mutumba (Kawempe South MP) and Alintuma Nsambu (Bukoto East) signed the document.
Mutema said businesspeople and local councillors were among those who embossed their signatures.
He said the talk-shows provided what he called one of the most invaluable fora through which the people of Uganda had been channelling their concerns to the authorities.
Mutema said undue restriction and suppression of the people’s rights had in the past occasioned barbarous acts, anarchy and untold suffering in the country.
Nsadhu, through the broadcasting council, banned the talk-shows, saying the operators were only allowed to operate within their gazetted studios and not in bars.
Most of the shows were held in bars around the city.
Mutema said the listeners were not receiving the signals directly from new life bar or the other places where the shows are held as purported by Basoga’s letter, but that the signals were being relayed back to the station before broadcast.
Kivumbi said they had received signatures from Kampala, Wakiso, Mbarara, Jinja and Kayunga districts. Others, he said, were from Masaka, Rakai, Luweero, Mukono and Mubende districts.
It is over a month since the shows were stopped.
Some of the affected radios had initially continued to hold the shows within their premises.