Mistreatment of our colleague, human rights activist Agather Atuhaire

ZAM and the Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors, NAIRE, condemn the mistreatment of our colleague, human rights activist
Agather Atuhaire at SCHIPHOL airport last Thursday. NAIRE’s statement reads:

The Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors, NAIRE, joins the Human Rights Foundation HRF in condemning https://lnkd.in/eKEpDgSP the distressing treatment meted out by Dutch immigration officials to its member, Ugandan journalist and human rights defender Agather Atuhaire, upon her transit at Schiphol airport last Thursday. Seemingly not acquainted with Ugandan passports and saying they had “never seen that type” of document before, Atuhaire was held for 30 minutes in silence, causing her to miss her onward flight to Nairobi. Afterwards the officers offered no apology, only a replacement flight 24 hours later.
Meanwhile, the brief detention, silence and uncertainty had triggered a full trauma response in Atuhaire, who had just last year survived detention by immigration officers, followed by solitary detention and torture in Tanzania (1). Though a brief phone internet search could have immediately established Atuhaire’s identity as a journalist and human rights activist, as well as a victim of severe recent abuse by authorities, -and also her itinerary as she was on her way back from a human rights conference in Norway-, the authorities who detained her did not see it necessary to check this record.
Agather Atuhaire is based in Uganda, where she, with fellow activists and democrats, engages daily with the fight for human rights, democracy and good governance in the autocratically-ruled state, known for its political prisoners, disappearances and record of torture. She lives continuously with fears of arrest and worse. She is the very example of a person who espouses human rights values, often purported to be “Western”, and indeed even more often waved about by Western states as “their” values. It is therefore with shock and dismay that we note that such a brave colleague of ours could be treated in this way by officers of the government of the Netherlands.
NAIRE believes that the Dutch government owes us a direct answer on what profiling criteria justified this treatment as well as on why immigration officers are apparently incapable of recognizing a Ugandan passport, or doing simple searches to confirm identities of individuals under their supervision, or why an apology was not even offered.
Ironically, the Tanzanian officers in question had just attended “immigration training” provided by the Dutch government, see a statement on this here https://lnkd.in/eyiNHYfJ
Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, Amnesty International, NRC, Humanrights International Organisation