Economics

UN Judge Who Studied Human Rights At Columbia Guilty Of Enslaving Woman In UK

In a spectacular display of leftist hypocrisy, a Ugandan United Nations judge who studied human rights at Columbia University and received a prestigious human rights award has been convicted of enslaving a woman in the United Kingdom.  

Forty-nine-year-old Lydia Mugambe, who is also a Ugandan High Court judge, was found guilty of tricking a Ugandan woman of coming to the UK, where Mugambe proceeded to impede her from finding a steady job, instead compelling her to serve her as a maid and care for Mugambe’s children — all without compensation. The charges were filed under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act.  
Lydia Mugambe is both a UN judge and a Ugandan High Court judge (HNP Newsdesk/Hyde News & Pictures Ltd via Telegraph)

“Lydia Mugambe has exploited and abused [the victim], taking advantage of her lack of understanding of her rights to properly paid employment and deceiving her as to the purpose of her coming to the UK,” prosecuting attorney Caroline Haughey KC told jurors during the trial. 

Mugambe was in the UK as she worked toward a PhD law degree from the University of Oxford, where her presence no doubt padded the prestigious school’s diversity measures. However, rather than realizing her promise to become a notable alumna, she’s instead a notorious product of the program, as she’s been convicted of conspiring to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law, facilitating travel with a view to exploitation, forcing someone to work, and conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

Police body-cam video captured Mugambe’s indignant reaction when she was told by police that she was being arrested “on suspicion of keeping someone in slavery and servitude.” Mugambe told the officer, “I am a judge in my country. I even have immunity. I am not a criminal.” 

Lydia Mugambe, a UN & Ugandan judge, has today been convicted of bringing a woman into the country illegally & then forcing her to work as a slave.
Mugambe tried to evade justice by claiming she had diplomatic immunity, which has now been removed
https://t.co/g0nVYCPBl7 pic.twitter.com/duzVQET6Jk
— Thames Valley Police (@ThamesVP) March 13, 2025
Mugambe’s claim of diplomatic immunity proved hollow. “Any immunity Mugambe may have enjoyed as a UN judge has been waivered by the Office of the United Nations Secretary General,” Thames Valley Police commander for Oxfordshire, Ch Supt Ben Clark told BBC.

“A young woman brought in for the convenience of Ms Mugambe’s life but mistreated – mistreated by Ms Mugambe, a woman of power and intelligence who had no qualms in lying not only to [the victim] but to the police when they sought to ensure her safety and wellbeing,” said Haughey. Gasps were heard in the courtroom as the guilty verdict was announced. The courtroom was cleared when Mugambe, in the words of the BBC account, “appeared unwell.” She will be sentenced on May 2. 

The more one learns about Mugambe, the more dizzying her hypocrisy grows. In 2019, she received the “Vera Chirwa human rights award,” which is “bestowed on a…

Five Years Later, We Remember How Politicians Unleashed COVID Tyranny

Authored by Jim Bovard via The Mises Institute,

Five years ago, politicians and bureaucrats went berserk and pointlessly ravaged Americans’ freedom. The Covid-19 pandemic provided the pretext to destroy hundreds of thousands of businesses, padlock churches, close down schools, and effectively place hundreds of millions of Americans under house arrest. Despite all the forced sacrifices, most Americans contracted covid and more than a million were listed as dying from the virus.

“Pandemic Security Theater Is Self-Destructive, And Won’t Make Us Safer” was the headline of my first salvo against the pandemic hysteria, published on March 24, 2020 in the Daily Caller. I scoffed at President Trump’s proclamations about being a “wartime president at war with an invisible enemy.” Wartime presidents too easily pretend they’re on a mission from God to scourge all resistance. I warned: “The pandemic threatens to open authoritarian Pandora’s Boxes. Permitting governments to seize almost unlimited power based on shaky extrapolations of infection rates will doom our republic.”

From the start of the pandemic, the Mises Institute was in the forefront of condemning policies that eradicated prosperity in the name of public health. In a May 19, 2020 Mises piece headlined, “Hacksawing the Economy,” I noted, “The political response to COVID-19 is eerily similar to Civil War surgeons’ rationales for hacking off arms and legs…. As long as politicians claim that things would be worse if they had not amputated much of the economy, they can pirouette as saviors.”

Living in the Washington area, I had a front row seat for many of Covid-19’s biggest absurdities. After federal officials whipped up panic, “I Believe in Science” lawn signs popped up like mushrooms, soon accompanied by “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” placards. Those signs looked to me like frightful decorations of a Halloween that never ended.

Thoreau provided my lodestar for the pandemic: “A man sits as many risks as he runs.” I knew that isolation would make me too ornery for my own good. I had survived the flu plenty of times in prior decades and I didn’t reckon covid would deliver my coffin nails. I was a co-leader of a Meetup hiking group which continued hiking almost every weekend throughout the pandemic.

But politicians made such jaunts more difficult. In February 2021, President Biden decreed that face masks must be worn in national parks. Probably 95 percent of the National Park Service’s 800+ million acres is uncrowded 95 percent of the time. The only “evidence” to justify the mandate was that many Biden supporters were frightened or enraged whenever they saw anyone not wearing a mask. The new mandate quickly became an entitlement program for junior Stasi members.

I told attendees on my hikes that masks were optional but kvetching about other hikers wearing or not wearing masks was prohibited. Biden’s edict helped turn the C & O Canal Towpath—one of my favorite hiking venues—into a hotbed of self-righteousness. That Towpath was ten feet wide in most places, but it was the principle of the matter. I had…