At Auschwitz-Birkenau, history does not speak loudly. It lingers instead, in objects, in absences, in the quiet weight of what remains. Children’s shoes sit behind glass. Names are still visible on worn suitcases, each one belonging to someone who believed they were being relocated, not erased. For me, attending the 2026 Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention, the visit was not symbolic. It was instructional. Auschwitz, is not simply a site of memory. It is a case study in how systems fail, gradually, methodically, and often without immediate resistance. “It was built-step by step. Policy by policy. Silence by silence.” That idea, that mass atrocity is not sudden, but cumulative, sits at the centre of my reflection. And it is what draws my gaze back to Uganda. Not as a comparison of outcomes, but of trajectories. “Uganda is not Auschwitz, it is not,” “But the conditions that make such atrocities possible-unchecked power, weakened institutions, and normalized fear-are not foreign to us.” Established by Nazi Germany in 1940, Auschwitz grew into the largest extermination and concentration camp complex during the Holocaust, where over a million people were systematically murdered. But what lingers most is not only the scale of death; it is the realization that Auschwitz was not inevitable. It was built. And standing there, immersed in the study of genocide prevention, I could not help but think of Uganda. VIOLENCE DOES NOT BEGIN WITH VIOLENCE Mass atrocities do not begin dramatically; they often begin quietly. As Mahmood Mamdani has long argued, extreme violence is often preceded by the politics of exclusion, where states define who belongs, who matters, and who can be sacrificed. Before the killing begins, the moral boundaries have already shifted. Auschwitz did not start with gas chambers. It began with the erosion of norms; when institutions stopped constraining power and began serving it. Uganda knows this trajectory. From the constitutional crises of the 1960s to the militarized violence of the 1970s, and the insurgencies that followed in the 1980s, the country has experienced repeated cycles of institutional fragility. Even under the current dispensation, often credited with restoring stability after 1986, the deeper story is more complex. Because stability, in Uganda, has often coexisted with violence. THE VIOLENCE WE CARRY Consider the Mukura Massacre site. In 1989, civilians were rounded up, detained in a railway wagon, and suffocated under state custody. Consider St. Peter’s College Ombaci. Students were lined up and executed; young lives extinguished in an act that still haunts the national conscience. Consider the devastation across Teso, Acholi, and West Nile, regions that endured overlapping violence: insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, and state collapse. And then the long shadow of the Lord’s Resistance Army. For over two decades, northern Uganda was defined by abductions, mutilations, and mass displacement. Children were turned into instruments of war. Communities were uprooted. Research by the Refugee Law Project consistently shows that these experiences are not confined to the past. In its recent analyses, the Project describes northern Uganda as existing in a “state of latent conflict,” where unresolved grievances-land disputes, trauma, and marginalization-continue to shape vulnerability. This is the uncomfortable truth: Violence in Uganda has not disappeared, it has evolved. A PATTERN OF INSTABILITY Since 1986, Uganda has experienced over 25 insurgent movements, including the Uganda People’s Army, Holy Spirit Movement, Allied Democratic Forces, and others. As Sverker Finnström notes in his work on war and memory in Acholi, cycles of violence persist not simply because of armed actors, but because of unresolved political and social fractures. Each rebellion is often treated as an isolated disruption. It is not. Taken together, they reveal a deeper pattern: a state grappling with uneven legitimacy; a political system where grievances repeatedly find violent expression; and a governance model that prioritizes control over inclusion. This is not merely a security issue. It is a political economy problem. FROM OPEN VIOLENCE TO MANAGED STABILITY Today, Uganda is not defined by widespread insurgency. Instead, it is characterized by what might be called managed stability. Institutions exist, elections are held and the language of democracy is maintained. But beneath this surface, the warning signs are clear. Reports by the Uganda Law Society highlight abductions, electoral violence, and persistent violations of the rule of law. Uganda continues to rank poorly on global rule-of-law indices. As Oloka-Onyango has argued, the challenge is not the absence of legal frameworks, but their selective application, often shaped by political considerations. The issue is not whether institutions exist. It is whether they function independently. ELECTIONS WITHOUT DEMOCRACY Uganda continues to hold elections, but elections alone do not make a democracy. The militarization of electoral processes, harassment of opposition actors, and continued reports of political detentions point to a system where competition exists, but within constrained boundaries. As Yash Ghai has observed in broader African contexts, constitutional systems can retain their formal structure while losing their substantive democratic content. This is where the lesson from Auschwitz becomes deeply uncomfortable. Because the most dangerous phase in any political system is not open repression. It is normalized repression. FEAR WITHOUT SPECTACLE Today’s Uganda does not rely on overt, continuous violence to maintain order, instead, it operates through predictable fear. Civil society faces increasing scrutiny, Media houses operate under pressure. Citizens self-censor. Fear becomes internalized. As Aili Mari Tripp has noted, regimes can sustain themselves not only through coercion, but through institutionalized constraint, where citizens adjust their behavior in anticipation of consequences. This is how systems endure. THE ARCHITECTURE OF POWER At its core, Uganda’s governance reflects a familiar political economy structure: Centralized executive authority, close alignment between political and security institutions, selective enforcement of laws, patronage-driven resource allocation, interestingly such systems can appear stable. But they are inherently fragile, because they depend not on strong institutions, but on controlled compliance. And history shows that such systems rarely resolve underlying tensions. They defer them. AUSCHWITZ AS A WARNING Uganda is not Auschwitz but Auschwitz is not just about Germany. It is about trajectories. It shows how societies move from order to repression, from repression to atrocity; not suddenly, but incrementally. Through silence. Through justification. Through normalization. THE PRESENT IS SPEAKING And this brings us to the present. Uganda’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections reaffirmed continuity. But continuity is not the same as legitimacy. The electoral environment was widely criticized for intimidation, restricted campaigning, and uneven competition, raising serious questions about the quality of democratic practice. At the same time, the issue of political prisoners and detainees remains persistent. Families, legal advocates, and civil society organizations continue to raise concerns about prolonged detention, due process violations, and enforced disappearances. This is not abstract but lived reality. Uganda today is not in open crisis but neither is it at ease. It exists in a state of managed tension, where stability is maintained, but freedoms are negotiated; where institutions function, but selectively; where fear is present, but often unspoken. And history teaches us that this is precisely the phase where societies either correct course or drift further. LISTENING BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE “Never Again” is not a slogan but It is a responsibility. A responsibility to recognize early warning signs, to resist normalization, to insist that accountability is not optional. Uganda does not need another tragedy to learn. It already has enough history. The question is whether we are willing to learn from it, because history does not repeat itself exactly. But it echoes with consequences. And the cost of ignoring those echoes is always paid in human lives.The post Auschwitz and Uganda: The dangerous comfort of silence appeared first on The Observer.