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Ugandan shot dead after peace march-witnesses
LIRA, Uganda, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Ugandan security forces shot a man dead on Wednesday as they dispersed protesters who were trying to force their way into a police station after a march to demand protection from rebels, witnesses said.
"The police tried to disperse the crowd because they wanted to attack the barracks," said mechanic Bulwadda Hussein, who witnessed the incident in the northern town of Lira.
"The police shot with live bullets and one guy was shot dead, it was by accident," he said.
Reuters cameraman David Mwangi saw the body of a man outside the police station bearing what appeared to be gunshot wounds. An army spokesman in Lira declined to comment, saying he was in a meeting.
Witnesses said a group of several hundred protesters had converged on the police station to express their anger at what they consider to be a lack of protection from security forces from Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.
The rebels massacred at least 230 people at a camp outside Lira for people uprooted by fighting during an attack on Saturday, according to a death toll given by local officials.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who says 84 people were killed in the attack, has vowed to crush the LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony.
Earlier, several thousand protesters had marched through Lira with placards that said "Stop the War" to demand an end to the fighting in northern Uganda, where the army has battled LRA rebels for the past 17 years.
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
