‘Peaceful’ Uganda is now a police besieged state

A military officer disperses supporters of opposition leader Kizza Besigye who had gathered to welcome him back to Kampala from Nairobi where he was seeking medical attention on May 12.

By Julius Barigaba, Special Correspondent




Posted  Sunday, May 29 2011 at 14:26

With armoured vehicles popularly known as Mamba sealing off the Constitution Square in the middle of the capital, the possibility of it creating a Ugandan version of Tahrir Square looks remote.

Tear gas and water canons have been parked around it for several months now, with policemen keeping vigil. But that might be a good thing. For all its resonance with Africa — and much of the Arab world — the Egyptian Tahrir is an aberration that is not going to happen every day, everywhere — least of all, in Uganda.  

Security is blocking access to Constitution Square, not to prevent a Tahrir, but to foil something worse — an Armageddon. Think Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 1989.  

Tahrir collected a million anti-Mubarak protestors over three weeks, leading to the dictator’s fall in February this year. In Beijing, however, Tiananmen was the scene of a massacre by a military whose mindset is that of anarchy, akin to that of Uganda’s armed forces, according to political analyst Mwambutsya Ndebesa, professor of history at Makerere University.  

Led by students and intellectuals, the Tiananmen uprising, started on April 15, 1989. In four weeks, then Chinese premier Li Peng had declared martial law. On June 4, tanks and troops descended on the Square and slaughtered the protestors in their thousands. 

In Egypt, it was a pro-people army that could not shoot at the protestors. The same cannot be said of Uganda’s armed forces, going by number of casualties in one month of protests — so far nine shot dead, and some of them were not even rioting.  

Constitution Square touches the busy Kampala Road at the bottom, the High Court Building on the opposite side, hugging both the East African Development Bank building and Central Police Station on either side. 

Further down is Kampala’s busiest section of the CBD: Trade activity, matatus, human traffic, mobile salesmen, vendors perched on shop fronts, pickpockets, are all here. It is frightening to imagine what would happen if security were to let protestors into Constitution Square and open fire.  

The Square has become a no-go area, barricaded by blue Mamba APCs, tear gas trucks and anti-riot police. To dare to go there is to court arrest, unlimited doses of teargas, gunshot wounds, and possibly, death.  

On May 10, former presidential candidates Norbert Mao, Olara Otunnu, Sam Lubega and Mohammad Kibirige Mayanja attempted to access Constitution Square and stage a rally there. Somewhat Mao and Mayanja sneaked through the first line of police cordon but could not go past the next.  

“We want to hold a rally in the Square that is named after our (1995) Constitution. It is our right,” Mao yelled at the police as they pushed him back.  

But Otunnu, Lubega and others were not lucky. A police truck spewing pink liquid pushed them 200 metres away, bathing them in a deluge of crimson — police’s latest anti-riot innovation.  

That is the norm in Kampala these days — people wake up to a menu of live bullets and teargas. Access to some roads is blocked, as boda boda cyclists, unemployed youths and Kisekka Market traders engage the military and police in running battles. Occasionally, a military chopper eerily monitors the action. Files of military men, with guns held combat style, patrol the streets; APCs are at entry points into the city.  

How long before tanks come out?  

Police spokeswoman Judith Nabakoba denies that deployment of military, police and heavy weaponry at Constitution Square and other strategic points in the city is not to crush opposition protests.

“We have terrorism threats. This (deployment) should not be looked at as targeting only protestors and the opposition,” she told The EastAfrican.  

Fair enough, indeed Uganda is a terrorist target — the ghastly images of 7/11 twin bombings in Kampala still torment the survivors.  

Nonetheless, the manner of deployment still raises questions. The mambas and troops, for instance, are not only stationed at Constitution Square, Uganda’s equivalent of Tahrir, but they are a permanent feature at the Kibuye roundabout and several points along Entebbe Road, and Kalerwe roundabout on Gayaza Road.  

These roads lead to opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s work place and home respectively. Besigye is the face of resistance in the ongoing showdown between government and opposition.  

Besides this, in Masaka, Mukono, Luwero, Jinja, Mbale, Gulu and a few other towns in the north, the presence of the military is equally pronounced. These towns hold the highest concentration of anti-government sentiment. Towns in western Uganda — the stronghold of the ruling party — have no such deployment.  

Since the February 18 elections, opposition leaders have questioned the legitimacy of president Museveni’s 68 per cent win. They claim this “victory” is courtesy of two things: Money to buy votes, and an arsenal brought out onto the streets to intimidate voters.  

After arresting Besigye on April 11, police chief Kale Kayihura fluffed his lines big time but gave pointers why Constitution Square is restricted. He told journalists that the non-violent protests must be crushed. Yet he confessed that the police arrested the walking politicians but “quite frankly we did not know where they were going... along the way they wanted to find masses...they thought they would create a Tahrir Square somewhere in the city centre.”  

Thus Constitution Square is no longer ‘the people’s space’ where they can go to drown the misery of today’s economic hardships or to escape the depression caused by it.  

But lately, the Square gives a disconcerting sense of Tiananmen. You would think Kampala was a combat zone, or that the president has declared martial law. 

It’s a siege that will hurt Uganda’s economy, political sanity and rule of law, argues FDC Secretary for Security Major John Kazoora. 

“That’s what they want. Let’s remain a police, besieged state,” he said. “Let our children grow up in a culture of being surrounded by guns and mambas because that’s the culture we have built. In the end we are hurting ourselves and scaring away tourists and investors. Is that what we want for our country?  

Asked whether the uprising will climax in a mass demo at Constitution Square as claimed by security, he replies, “I am a founder member of A4C (Activists for Change); our campaign is about high prices, not to go to Constitution Square; why do they put words in our mouth?”  

Tour operators warned recently that Uganda will lose $100 million worth of tourism revenue monthly if the riots persist. But it is not tourists alone that are put off by the military hardware on display. In five months, Kampalans have seen more mambas than they have ever cared to.
“I am from the north but I had never seen so many mambas before,” says legislator Odonga Otto.

As the theatre of war for two decades, Northern Uganda endured this. Now the south, which enjoyed uninterrupted stability all this time, is being treated to real images of war, without actually being in one. It is the perfect irony of a country that is at peace. 

The see-saw events between opposition and government in the post February 18 election period pose some serious questions. Why does a man who was given such a bad beating at the polls attract so many crowds, some ready to die for him? What would happen if government let him get to Constitution Square? He scored only 26 per cent, after all. So, he would attract only a few thousand.

Not really. Besigye has built a magnetism that his tormentors cannot undo.  

The events of Thursday May 12, sum up as the spectacular climax of the tensions that had built up since the Walk-to-Work campaign started a month earlier to protest soaring fuel, food and commodity prices.  

It culminated into a clash of two forces — Besigye’s ‘army’ of boda boda cyclists and unemployed youth, armed with only twigs and their v-signs, overwhelming state police and military. Yes, some rode their motorcycles acrobatically enough to kill themselves, but they generally went about it peacefully, and the police were ready to take this humbling lesson, but not the military.  

“From the airport to Katabi, the crowds were non-violent because [Assistant Inspector General of Police, Francis] Rwego was in charge. Then the military took over and Rwego was annoyed because unprovoked, the military started beating and tear gassing people,” Maj Kazoora says.  

For his troubles, Rwego was suspended on May 17 and his sin is to have allowed a snail pace convoy. In the end, a 45-minute drive took nine hours with Besigye’s supporters and Museveni’s swearing-in entourage scrambling for space on the small Entebbe road.

Initially, the agreement was to allow three vehicles with police lead and escort cars in his convoy. But the numbers kept swelling, and police chose to accommodate them, provided that the crowds remained non-violent.

Diplomatic embarrassment  

Police and military descending on the crowds with live bullets, tear gas and chemicals was the ultimate diplomatic embarrassment, particularly when Besigye’s crowd responded by throwing stones at motorcades of presidents that attended Museveni’s inauguration. 

Angered by this episode, Museveni’s military might react in radical style. It is the best way to deal with an unrelenting opposition that has braved violence, but built up some momentum to resist since April 11. This might trigger a Tiananmen-like response.  

The increased presence of military hardware in the middle of the capital is twofold: To drive fear, and it is also a statement of intent, political actors argue.  

“We know the NRM intends to unleash the army in civilian clothes. This is a ploy that is so transparent we can see through it. We want to demystify the fear Museveni has instilled in the public; thereafter this campaign will evolve into a social movement,” says Otunnu.  

Yet there is more to come. In the next financial year, police has just put in a budget request for Ush29 billion ($12.4 million) for tear gas and anti-riot gear alone. And they need new supplies too, because some of the current stock of tear gas being used actually expired in 2004.  

So, will opposition foot soldiers cower from the mambas and tanks? Apparently not. Those that have not been shot dead (Human Rights Watch recently documented nine people, but that was before five other deaths reported in the May 12 fiasco), have been tear gassed and beaten, but they have marched on, buoyed by Besigye’s famous “you should not be intimidated” line. 

In a recent interview with the Monitor, IGP Kayihura stated that a police officer who escorted protestors to their place of work was ‘guilty’ while the one who used the butt of his gun to vandalise Besigye’s car, was hailed as ‘doing his job’. 

In short, when the order to unleash violence comes, the executing man will not waver. In the meantime, politicians and protestors can get close to Constitution Square if they are looking for a repeat of Tiananmen.

Rwanda officials would have to be really foolish to organise hyped UK murder plot

By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi  (email the author)

Posted  Sunday, May 29 2011 at 14:17

As the attention of East Africans was firmly fixed on Uganda’s perennially fractious politics and the latest battle of wills between President Yoweri Museveni and his tough-as-nails nemesis, Dr Kiiza Besigye, Britain’s Metropolitan police kicked up a storm that has engulfed the Government of Rwanda and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the past week or so.

Armed with “credible intelligence” from the FCO, the force had dispatched officers to go find two men. One is a Rwandan national in exile, the other, a UK national of Rwandan extraction. The officers went bearing grim news: The government of Rwanda was plotting against the two men and their lives were at risk.

If my memory serves me right, news bulletins suggested that the officers even insinuated that assassins might already be on the way to the UK to bump them off. And then they dropped another proverbial bombshell: the Met could not guarantee their security, so they had better be creative about how to do it themselves. They may even consider leaving their current addresses for some time.

As with all titillating stories, the media picked this up and ran off with it. And as with all bad, sensational, or ‘exciting’ news about Rwanda, it hit the newspapers, radio bulletins and TV broadcasts with a bang! I was half-listening to news on radio, half reading newspapers when I heard it on the BBC one early morning.

I was intrigued. It came in the wake of President Kagame’s robust and widely-publicised online exchange with a cocky British journalist who, while tweeting, had allowed himself to dispense wisdom on what is and is not good in and for Rwanda and Rwandans, without ever setting foot there.

New -media-savvy Kagame, not one to take lectures from self-appointed Rwanda experts, shot back, punch for punch and more, leaving the journalist taken aback. Surely that had come and gone, and couldn’t possibly be the background to the new story.

I then recalled that two political groups seeking to unseat the Rwanda Patriotic Front led government, Victoire Ingabire’s FDU-Inkingi, and Lt. General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa’s Rwanda National Congress, had recently held a meeting in the United Kingdom.

I wondered if the two were not connected. It seems they are, as one of the two men, one Jonathan Musonera, had been a key organiser of the meeting. He is also known to have got into a brief but heated exchange with President Kagame on the BBC’s Africa Have Your Say programme in the recent past.

It did not take long before it became the subject of intense online and verbal discussion among Rwandans and outsiders, some of whom have more than passing interest in the country.

Those prone to arriving at easy conclusions saw an immediate connection between this particular story and that of the attempted murder of Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa last year, which some firmly believe was the handiwork of “the Rwandans,” although the South African judiciary is yet to come up with a definitive verdict.

A friend with whom I discussed the issue believed Musonera had “made a mistake” by “arguing with Kagame” on radio. For him that was reason enough for the Rwanda government to invest energy and resources in a plot to kill him. It goes to show how lightly Kagame is taken by some of his critics.

Predictably, reactions from Rwandan officials and commentators on public affairs have been livid and dismissive of the story as “pure fiction” and “completely without foundation.”

And now the Rwanda government has challenged the metropolitan police to produce firm evidence of their claims and insisted on a retraction should they not have it.

How the Met responds to that will go a long way towards shedding light on a rather extraordinary story. Should the Met refuse to come clean, it will only strengthen the view that the FCO’s “credible intelligence” is based on a bogus story. Rwandans and Rwandaphiles wait with bated breath.

For me, though, the question is whether, given Britain’s well-established reputation in Rwanda as one of the country’s key donors and the RPF government’s important and trusted ally in an otherwise judgmental and easily hostile, “international community,” Rwandan officials would be so daft as to risk ruining the relationship by killing two dissidents living thousands of miles outside the country.

The North America Rwandan Community brings Rwanda Day to the City of Chicago.

The Diaspora will be honored by the presence of His Excellency the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame.

Banks, real-estate developers, insurance companies, employment agencies and many other organizations will be showcasing various products and services offered in Rwanda.

Rwanda: The Sinister Offensive of a Regime in Decline

Rwanda: The Sinister Offensive of a Regime in Decline

Emmanuel Hakizimana, Ph.D.

President of the Rwandan Congress of Canada

On May 13, 2011, BBC Radio broadcast information according to which two Rwandan nationals living in London had just been warned by British police that their lives were in danger. In a warning notice sent to each of them, police wrote: “Reliable intelligence states that the Rwandan Government poses an imminent threat to your life. The threat could come in any form.” Two weeks earlier, the London newspaper The Independent published an article stating that the British intelligence service MI5 had issued an advisory notice to the Ambassador of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, Ernest Rwamucyo, warning him that British aid to Rwanda would be cut if he did not cease to threaten and intimidate Rwandan nationals living in Great Britain. That aid amounts to more than CAN$130 million.

The reports have caused considerable concern among members of the Rwandan community living in the West and more particularly those residing in Commonwealth countries including Canada. Indeed, they never imagined that the Kigali regime would dare to export insecurity to countries that are its biggest supporters. It will be remembered that those countries disregarded the recommendations put forward in a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and agreed to allow Rwanda to join the Commonwealth a little over a year ago.

The campaign of terror further illustrated by the events in London seems to be part of a strategy that was initiated by General Paul Kagame a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and was escalated following the release in October 2010 of the United Nations mapping report on crimes committed in Congo between 1993 and 2003. According to the report, the army of President General Paul Kagame committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly crimes of genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo and Congolese citizens.

The strategy basically has two concomitant areas of focus. The first is a vast diplomatic campaign in Western countries primarily intended to demonize opponents of the current Rwandan regime and denounce the UN mapping report. The second is the assassination of opponents, real or imagined, as well as independent journalists who reveal the criminal activities of the Kigali regime.

As part of the diplomatic offensive, a large Rwandan delegation led by Senator Aloysie Inyumba (recently appointed Minister of Gender and Family) toured Europe in November 2010. Another arrived in Canada in the second half of May 2011 for a series of conferences organized in conjunction with the Embassy of Rwanda in Ottawa. At the same time, Paul Kagame is scheduled to personally visit Chicago in the United States from June 10 to 12, 2011.

The recent events in Great Britain fall within the political assassinations component of the strategy, which was revived a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and continues to this day. It began with the decapitation of Green Party Vice-President André Kagwa Rwisereka, the assassination of independent journalist Léonard Rugambage and the assassination attempt in South Africa on General Kayumba Nyamwasa. It has now spread to Western countries.

Rwandan nationals who fled General Paul Kagame’s regime and settled in Canada take the recent events in London very seriously. They now know that the Rwandan regime can also carry out a campaign of terror in Canada and elements abound to indicate that their fear is not unfounded. First, there are precedents on Canadian soil. In 1998, a former Red Cross employee was the victim of an attempted murder because he had witnessed massacres perpetrated against Rwandan Hutu refugees by Paul Kagame's army. The incident was made public in an article published in La Presse on January 29, 1998. Next, the fact that Canada is the only Western country not to take legal action against the killers of Canadian citizens living in Rwanda (including Father Claude Simard and Father Guy Pinard) is not likely to deter Paul Kagame from sowing terror on Canadian soil. Finally, the initiative by Rwandan authorities to carry out a campaign of terror in Great Britain when that country ranks first among providers of aid to Rwanda shows that no country, not even Canada, can delude itself into believing that the Kigali regime will not dare to carry out terrorist attacks on its territory.

Many members of the Rwandan community in Canada fled Paul Kagame’s regime for different reasons. Some are survivors of his crimes against humanity, as revealed by the UN mapping report referred to above. Others, including journalists, jurists and human rights activists, were singled out because they denounced human rights violations and other abuses. All arrived broken-hearted and wanted nothing more than to live in peace and thrive in their host countries. The campaign of terror waged today by the Kigali regime is plunging them back into the world of terror they fled. Canada should take action immediately and warn Rwandan authorities against organizing terrorist activities on Canadian territory. At stake are the safety and security of all Canadians.

Rwandan Government Program to End Thatched Housing Leaves Pygmies Homeless

A Rwandan government program to stop people living in thatched houses as part of a plan to alleviate poverty left hundreds of Batwa Pygmy families homeless, according to advocacy groups including Survival International.
The eradication of the dwellings, which began in 2008, stepped up this year after the federal budget for the project more than doubled to 4 billion Rwandan francs ($6.7 million), said Augustin Kampayana, chairman of the Rural Resettlement Taskforce. Since 2009, the state eliminated 116,000 thatched houses and will remove the remaining 8,000 by July, he said.
“The biggest problem is that the Batwa were not told their houses would be destroyed,” said Kalimba Zephyrin, director of Communaute des Potiers du Rwanda, an advocacy group that works to protect the interests of Batwa Pygmies. “It was done without preparation or communication.”
Pygmy peoples, whose average height is less than 5 feet, have lived as hunters and gatherers in forests across central Africa for thousands of years, according to Survival International, the London-based advocacy group. The traditional habitats of pygmies, who number about 500,000, are being destroyed by logging, war and famine, displacing their communities, the group says.
“Rwanda’s Batwa continue to face racism and discrimination on a daily basis,” Survival said in a May 25 e-mailed statement. “Most eke out a meager living as wage laborers or potters after their communities were forced from their forest homes to create national parks free from human habitation.”

Snake Bites

The program being carried out by the Rwandan government aims to alleviate poverty by moving people into organized villages, allowing farmers to increase production on consolidated, fertilized lands and improve the health and safety of communities, Kampayana said. Thatched houses, he said, are prone to fires and leaks and residents are vulnerable to bites from insects and snakes.
“There is a lot people gain by living in villages rather than scattered around in those houses that are not decent,” he said in a May 27 interview in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.
Of the 8,000 Batwa families in fixed homes in Rwanda, as many as 80 percent were living in thatched houses last year, according to Zephyrin. Most of those people have been given replacement homes or news roofs, he said in a May 25 interview. Many others were forced to evacuate their homes without the resources to find a new place to live, he said.
“At first, they refused, but then they were forced by police, army and local security forces,” he said. “The Batwa are all poor, so they had nowhere to go.”

‘Cramped’ Housing

Most moved into “cramped” government housing or temporary residences provided by international organizations, Zephyrin said. About 450 families continue to camp in the open, waiting for new government homes, he said.
In Bidudu, a small cluster of houses occupied by Batwa people in the countryside outside of Kigali, residents including Cecilia Nyiranteziryayo, a 29-year-old mother of five, said most of their houses were destroyed or damaged when local authorities removed the thatched roofs off their mud and stone homes in February. And while the structures still standing were given sheet metal roofs, those that fell remain piles of rubble.
When asked if the Batwa people were being treated differently than the majority of people who are either ethnic Hutu or Tutsi, Kampayana said that the Rwandan government neither recognizes ethnicities, nor discriminates against them.
Since Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, when 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in a 100-day slaughter by extremist Hutus, the government has instituted a justice and reconciliation program that includes eliminating the formal acknowledgement of ethnicity. The Batwa Pygmies are known as a “historically marginalized people” in the country.
“For us, as a government, we are all one person,” he said. “We are all Rwandese.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Murdock in Kigali via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

Report Finds Mixed Record for Rwanda’s Genocide Courts

As the work of Rwanda’s Gacaca court system nears its end, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that finds mixed results for the community-based courts in dealing with the genocide.

On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch released Justice Compromised, a 144-page report on Rwanda’s genocide courts.

In the aftermath of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that left an estimated 800,000 dead, the country struggled to come to terms with the extent of the killings and crime that took place in just more than three months. By 1998, less than 1,300 genocide suspects had been tried, with another 130,000 in Rwandan jails designed to hold 12,000 inmates.
According to the report, Rwanda’s jails were so overcrowded prisoners began to die by the thousands.

Human Rights Watch researcher Carina Tertsakian said the unprecedented situation forced Rwanda to find an alternative.

“For these reasons primarily they decided to explore what they call Gacaca, which is a cross between a traditional form of community-based conflict resolution, and on the other hand a more conventional system of punitive justice that has some of the features of a modern criminal system,” said Tertsakian.

The Gacaca system allows the accused to face members of the community and victims to face punishment for their crimes and unearth details about the genocide itself. Through the community courts, family and friends of victims have been able to learn what happened to their loved ones and, in many cases, where they are buried.

Since implementing Gacaca in 2001, more than 12,000 courts have tried 1.2 million genocide cases. The courts have alleviated the massive pressures placed on the Rwandan justice systems. But according to the Human Rights Watch report, many judicial standards were sacrificed in order to implement Gacaca.

The report details many abuses, including intimidation of defense witness, corruption of judges and the use of the courts to settle personal scores. It says many of Gacaca’s judges also are inadequately trained, often leading to unfair proceedings.

In addition to the court’s failures, many of the crimes committed during the genocide have simply been ignored, such as rapes and acts committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front - now Rwanda’s ruling party.

“The law was amended in 2004 and it was amended in such a way that it excluded those crimes," said Tertsakian. "The government, in fact, launched a campaign at that time to ensure that crimes allegedly committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front were not discussed in Gacaca.”

While such crimes were supposed to be dealt with by Rwanda’s regular courts, Tertsakian said very few of those crimes have made it to trial.

On May 20, Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama announced the Gacaca courts would officially close in December, nearly 10 years after they began.

Human Rights Watch is urging the Rwandan government to establish a review board staffed by professional judges to investigate possible abuses or shortcomings in the Gacaca proceedings and to address any failures of justice.