Government lifts ban on private radio station

The Ugandan Broadcasting Council on Thursday lifted a ban on a popular radio station shut down a week ago over a talk show that featured a discussion on the death of Sudan's Vice President, John Garang. The council's operations officer, Denis Lukaaya, told IRIN on Friday that K-FM radio was allowed back on air after protracted negotiations, following which the station paid a fine of 4,950,000 Uganda shillings (US $2750) - the cost of the probe. "They [K-FM] will be free to criticise, but that criticism must have a limit and responsibility in it. They were told that they can criticise, but do this responsibly, taking into account the sensitivity of the issues and our cultural norms," Lukaaya said. Following the closure of K-FM on 11 August, the host of the show that sparked the row, Andrew Mwenda, was arrested and on Monday charged with sedition. He denied the charges and was granted bail by a court in the capital, Kampala. In its ruling, the council said irresponsible but influential broadcast houses had the capacity to "unleash hostilities". "The right to free speech is not absolute," it added. Conspiracy theories have abounded in the Ugandan media about the cause of Garang's death. The Sudanese leader, along with several Sudanese and Ugandans, perished on 30 July when the Uganda government-owned helicopter they were travelling in crashed near the Uganda-Sudan border. During his talk show on 10 August, Mwenda accused the government of "incompetence, and said they had put Garang on "a junk helicopter... at night... in poor weather... over an insecure area". K-FM was closed a day after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni described local newspapers as "vultures" and threatened to shut down media outlets speculating about Garang's death, arguing that they were endangering regional security. The station's closure and Mwenda's arrest have been widely criticised, with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists saying arbitrary censorship and harassment was "not something one expects to see in a democracy". Garang, who died en route to southern Sudan after a meeting with Museveni, had led a 21-year rebellion against the Sudanese government before signing a peace accord in January that saw him take up the position of first vice president just three weeks before his death.