Reuters AlertNet reports that the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda's main opposition party, has announced it will challenge the results of last week's presidential election in the Ugandan Supreme Court. Kizza Besigye, the FDC candidate, said, "The main thrust of the petition is that our supporters were disenfranchised; the falsification of results, of which we have a lot of evidence; and bribery."

The Ugandan electoral commission announced Saturday that incumbent Yoweri Museveni won 59 percent of the vote, while Besigye won 37 percent. FDC supporters protesting the alleged election irregularities have been driven off the streets by riot policemen firing water cannons and tear gas.

Catholic News Service reports that several Catholic-run radio stations in northern Uganda were illegally ordered to halt election coverage in the days leading up to last week's presidential and parliamentary elections in Uganda by armed policemen and representatives of the ruling National Resistance Movement party.

Also, the Mail and Guardian reports that the online edition of Uganda's largest independent newspaper, the Monitor, and its sister radio station, KFM, were disabled last week as election results began to trickle in, temporarily preventing independent reporting of the partial election results. Although the Monitor did not directly accuse the Ugandan government of disabling their operations, they did say the government warned them to stop reporting the results.

Uganda's Electoral Commission has declared incumbent Yoweri Museveni the winner of the presidential elections, and the "overall results" have been endorsed by the EU and US. However, Kizza Besigye, the runner-up, and at least one other election monitoring group have declared the election a fraud due to voter intimidation and other widespread irregularities.

The UN Mission in DR Congo reports that some sixty Ugandan rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) have been for some days in the extreme north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. MISNA received the report from humanitarian sources on the scene, specifying that the Ugandan rebels entered the territory from South Sudan, where they have training camps, and that after crossing the border settled in some small rural villages near Duru.

Long lines marked a landmark multiparty election today in Uganda as voters turned out in huge numbers. The more than 20,000 polling stations across the country have been reporting peaceful voting despite fears of violence. Some opposition was reported in Kampala when voters in the Gogonya Zone 1, Nsambya district found their names missing from the register's list while students at Makerere were missing voter cards. In many northern and eastern districts, voting was delayed by early morning rain, however polling stations remained open as lines of voters waited to cast their ballots. Click here to see Uganda's Landmark Poll in Pictures.

Ugandans head to the polls tomorrow to vote in what looks to be the country's closest election in recent history. To learn more about the election, visit The Daily Monitor, Uganda's largest independent newspaper, or click here to read the BBC News' latest reports.

Uganda-CAN shares the worry of Human Rights Watch and others that violence and intimidation could scar a hopeful exercise in democracy. We call on all political parties and activists to use the ballot, not the bullet in working toward change.

Today's Sudan Tribune reports that Salva Kiir - the Sudanese VP, president of southern Sudan, and head of the SPLM - has accused elements of the Sudanese army of still supporting the LRA rebellion. A recent report by the International Crisis Group also cited evidence that elements of the Sudanese military still support the LRA, which began aiding the LRA in 1994 but supposedly stopped under the terms of a 2001 agreement between Sudan and Uganda.

Reuters AlertNet reports that police in the capital city of Kampala fired tear gas and a water cannon at an opposition rally in the latest example of violence before this Thursday's presidential and parliamentary elections. Although the police said the action was prompted by the crowd's "hooliganism", foreign journalists denied having seen any provocation on the part of the opposition supporters.

Two opposition supporters were killed and four others wounded when an unidentified gunman opened fire on an opposition rally in Kampala ago three days. Read more here.

The Monitor reports that Reagan Okumu, a Ugandan parliamentarian from Aswa County in Gulu district, is under police investigation for allegedly saying "seditious statements". The comments that have provoked the investigation reportedly accused Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of wanting to sell Acholi land, citing this as the reason he had "kept [the Acholi] in internally displaced people's camps".

Uganda-CAN condemns the Ugandan government's investigation and the accusations leveled at Okumu. Just last month Okumu, a member of the opposition FDC party, and two others were acquitted on charges of murder that many international observers called an example of political persecution. Furthermore, Okumu's statements concerning Acholi land - far from being unjustified falsifications - reflect the sentiments of many Acholi people. Fears that the government is going to steal the land of displaced persons in northern Uganda stem from an insensitive government land policy and frequent remarks from President Museveni that land should be given to foreign investors.

For more information about land security issues in northern Uganda, visit Uganda-CAN's resource page. Also, stay tuned later this week and read about Uganda-CAN's interview with Ugandan land rights activist Judy Adoko of the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda.

Speaking at Duke University last week, Bishop Ochola - a retired Bishop of the Diocese in Kitgum, Uganda - gave a powerful speech about the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda. Ochola, a long-time and tireless advocate for peace in the region, mentioned the oft-ignored plight of women in IDP camps, relating the lament of one northern Ugandan woman, who said, "When the battlefield now turns to the women’s bodies, where will the women turn? The rebels kill them and our own sons in the UPDF rape them. Where should we go?"

Throughout the speech Ochola renewed his call for the international community to declare the conflict in northern Uganda a genocide, saying, " Can this kind of the situation be allowed to exist, even for a moment, in Washington, in New York, or in London, or in Paris? Not at all, it is inhuman treatment against the people, and at best, it is genocide against humanity with impunity."

Today's Monitor reports that thousands of civilians in Apac district have fled to Alito trading center after suspected LRA rebels killed six civilians on Monday night. One of the victims was a 15 year old girl.

Local officials said that the LRA has been active in Alito sub-county throughout the year, abducting 18 people in January and killing three more last week. Many are beginning to construct temporary huts in Alito trading center, demonstrating that local people do not see the Monday attack as an isolated event. Along with recent reports of LRA attacks and abductions from Lira and Gulu districts, these horrific attacks defy triumphalist claims by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and UPDF officials that the LRA is on the verge of military defeat.

A UN OCHA report released this week reveals that twenty people were abducted by the LRA between February 4th and February 12th of this year. The LRA - apparently defying government claims that it is nearly defeated - abducted civilians as far south as Lira district and also abducted ten civilians in Gulu municipality. The report also notes three civilian deaths and four clashes between the UPDF and LRA during the first two weeks of February. For the full report, visit the ReliefWeb website.

The Washington Post has published a story that the people of northern Uganda desire change as elections approach next week. President Museveni's rivals in the February 23 vote -- the first multi-party polls in two decades -- have toured the north's squalid camps, promising to end what the United Nations says is one of the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters. The rest of Uganda has largely prospered under Museveni but in the last poll in 2001, he only won 18 percent of the vote in parts of Acholiland, one of the worst affected northern areas. This time, support for the opposition, particularly Kizza Besigye's Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), is again running high in the North, although opinion polls put Museveni -- once a darling of Western donors but now accused by critics of becoming more autocratic -- firmly in the lead in a countrywide count. Read more here.

Today's New Vision reports that the UPDF attacked Kony-led LRA rebels in southern Sudan on Tuesday. Kony has been on the run from a UPDF offensive for over a week, and is reportedly fleeing towards the DR Congo or the Central African Republic.

However, the New Vision also reported that Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan minister and the government's chief mediator to the LRA, has warned the LRA presence in northern Uganda and the surrounding region is still significant. Bigombe's statement contradicts a spate of recent claims by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Ugandan military officials that the LRA is nearly defeated.

Gathered near the center of Kampala, a crowd welcoming Dr. Besigye was fired into by a soldier who witnesses claim was trying to drive through the crowd when a stone was thrown at his vehicle. With elections a week away, today's shooting left four wounded and two dead as well as a cloud of tear gas looming over the city. Read more here, at Reuters.

Today's Sudan Tribune reports that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has called for the removal of the LRA from southern Sudan within one month. LRA attacks in southern Sudan have hurt efforts to implement a peace deal signed there in January 2004 that ended a 20-year civil war between southern Sudanese rebels and the central Sudanese government.

The central Sudanese government has historically been the LRA's primary benefactor, but has agreed in recent years to stop supporting it. However, a report released last month from the International Crisis Group states that some elements of the Sudanese military still support the LRA.

Reuters AlertNet reports today on the atmosphere in northern Uganda leading up to the Feb. 23rd presidential and parliamentary elections. The story captures the dissatisfaction many northerners feel with incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, who they see as largely responsible for the two decades of conflict that have plagued the region. However, even as northern Ugandans hope for change, evidence is accumulating that the elections will not be free and fair. Opposition candidates have been harassed throughout the campaign, and a report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch states that voters in northern Uganda are especially susceptible to fraud and intimidation.

Human Rights Watch today released a report saying that the ruling NRM government in Uganda has created an atmosphere in which upcoming elections are unlikely to be free and fair. The international human rights organization said that harassment of opposition candidates and party members, misuse of government resources, military interference in the judiciary, and unfair access to media outlets have all favored incumbent presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni and other NRM candidates.

The report also states that northern Uganda is especially vulnerable for irregularities, saying, "voting for many in northern Uganda will likely be a trying, dangerous and ultimately impossible task." In some cases, residents are 'caught between two fires' - the LRA has reportedly threatened violence against those that vote for the NRM, while other reports accuse UPDF detachments of threatening to withdraw from IDP camps and leave residents at the mercy of LRA attacks if they do not vote for the NRM. Additionally, a complex pattern of migration for many IDPs, sometimes forced upon them by government decongestion programs, means that many IDPs are now far away from the places where they are registered to vote and will be unable to safely access any polling station.

To read Uganda-CAN's guide to the Feb. 23rd elections, click here.

Today's Daily Vision reports that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered the Ugandan military to step up operations against the LRA in order to speed up the decongestion of IDP camps in northern Uganda.

Today's Daily Monitor reports that a UPDF officer in northern Uganda has told IDPs in Lira and Teso districts that they can go home because the LRA has been removed from those regions. Although many IDPs wish to return home - especially after tens of thousands have been left homeless in recent weeks from fires in the crowded camps - recent UN reports state that the security situation in northern Uganda is actually deteriorating.

A military spokesman also said that the military had killed on LRA rebel, captured two more, and accepted the surrender of another three in the past week.

The Daily Monitor reports that former UN Under-Secretary-General, Olara Otunnu, has presented an "eleven-point agenda for action" on the war in northern Uganda to at least three political parties in the run up to the February 23 presidential poll.

Otunnu wrote to presidential candidates Kizza Besigye, Ssebaana Kizito, and Miria Obote a week before he appeared on K FM's Tonight with Andrew Mwenda talk show. According to a summary of the letter availed to Daily Monitor, Otunnu said,"The enormity and nature of what is unfolding in northern Uganda calls for a bold, prophetic voice--- a moral voice of witness and action. We look particularly to the new leaders of the democracy-seeking parties to prophetic voice in leadership."

Today's New Vision reports that LRA leader Joseph Kony, who fled from southern Sudan to the northeastern DR Congo last week, has changed direction and is headed towards the Central African Republic. Kony fled southern Sudan under pressure from an intense UPDF offensive and was thought to be joining his second-in-command, Vincent Otti, who is currently in the DR Congo.

For more information about the Central African Republic, visit the BBC website.