An American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has alleged that a Chinese Telecom giant, Huawei is assisting Ugandan government to hack technology gadgets of opposition leaders including Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi.
In an article supported with a 10-minute video, WSJ journalists Joe Parkinson, Nicholas Bariyo and Josh Chin investigate a claim by Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi commonly referred to as Bobi Wine that the government of Uganda is hacking his phone and listening in to his conversations.
“I cannot talk to you about sensitive stuff on my phone because our conversation is being listened to,” Bobi Wine claims in the WSJ video.
The Embassy of People’s Republic of China in Uganda has since described the claims as “pure fake news” in a statement issued Thursday.
Statement
The Embassy has taken notice of an article from the Wall Street Journal on 14 August, 2019, entitled “Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents”, which accuses Huawei of supporting the domestic spying by the Ugandan Government and implies that the Chinese Government is behind Huawei.
The Embassy finds the article PURE FAKE NEWS and
TOTALLY GROUNDLESS!
The article said “By May 2017, Uganda’s police force had sent dozens of officers for technical training in Beijing, accompanied by senior Huawei Africa-based employees and a senior Chinese embassy official, Chu Maoming. After three days the group was flown to the company’s Shenzhen headquarters, where Huawei executives shared details on the surveillance systems it had built across the world according to Ugandan security officials who were present. Mr. Chu played a crucial intermediary role in the talks. He accompanied the delegation to meetings with China’s Public Security Agency in the ministry’s cube-like complex near Tiananmen Square, where they were shown the capabilities of the Chinese surveillance state. Mr. Chu then flew with the group to Shenzhen and sat in on meetings with Huawei executives, according to the Ugandan officials present.”
The journalists gave such a vivid account, as if they were with Mr. Chu then. However, the Embassy has to point out that this is UTTERLY UNTRUE. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chu Maoming had stayed in Uganda for the whole year of 2017, during which time he had never gone back to China.
Such being the case, the Embassy has to seriously doubt the credibility and reliability of the whole article, as well as the professionalism and the basic qualifications of the journalists, who are serving such a big media house as Wall Street Journal, for their ulterior motives behind the scene.
