Uganda killed 1,600 people – DRC
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) documented about 1,600 people including 138 Congolese soldiers, which it says were killed by Ugandan soldiers, reports Anne Mugisa.
This was one of the issues that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is to decide.
The DRC documented 38 officers and some 100 Congolese soldiers whom it said had previously been disarmed, as some of those massacred by the Ugandan forces at the Kavumu airport on August 3, 1988. It said about 856 civilians were killed at Kasika in Lwindi in south Kivu and their bodies scattered in a distance of about 60 km between Kilungutwe and Kasika, on August 24 1988.
The DRC cited an unspecified number of people, which it said were killed by the Ugandan forces in different places. It said there were many cases of rape
particularly on August 29, 1998 in Kasika and on September 22,1998 in Bukavu. It alleged that Ugandan troops spread HIV/AIDS as a weapon of war.
Uganda maintains it is innocent and that to demonstrate that it even allowed and cooperated with the United Nations Panel, which investigated the allegations of its plunder of the DRC.
New Vision: Thursday, 14th April, 2005
Avoid revisionism
IN THE continuing will he, won’t he debate about the possible return home of former president Apollo Milton Obote, a lot has been said about how culpable he is for what went wrong in Uganda under his watch.
In his two stints in power, detention without trial was commonplace, opposition politicians were harassed, 300,000 people lost their lives in a scotched-earth anti-insurgency policy, and there was politics of violence, including the raid on Lubiri. All this is on record, yet in the past few days, there has been an attempt to whitewash Obote.
Obote may not have held a gun at anyone’s head, just as Agusto Pinochet may never have personally shot anyone. But the former Chilean dictator is being held accountable for the extreme violence that underpinned his rule. In both cases, we have to evaluate how the two leaders benefited from excessive use of force by their state organs, and whether either president took any measures to mitigate their effect on a cowed population.
Attempts to re-write history are common with the passage of time. We witnessed it two years ago when Idi Amin died, and people tried to put a gloss on what is otherwise acknowledged to be the most murderous rule Africa has known. There are still voices that claim that the Holocaust did not happen in mid-20th century Europe, and that Hitler was misunderstood. What next shall we hear about the Rwanda genocide?
All this is an insult to the respective peoples who suffered, but thankfully, most of it is documented. The Nuremberg trials record Nazi atrocities and Hitler’s culpability. In Uganda, the Human Rights Commission has a big catalogue of abuses occasioned on Ugandans between 1962 and 1986. These records should now be put on public display, lest we forget or are conditioned to forget.
Legally, Obote may or
may not
be liable; political expediency may dictate that he be forgiven. But morally, he is culpable, so we could forgive, but should never forget.
Ends
New Vision Editorial: Thursday, 14th April, 2005
Obote talk just a scare!
SIR — It is shocking for President Yoweri Museveni and his loud speaker, Nsaba Buturo, to insist now that Milton Obote will be charged for crimes against humanity when he returns. The President and Buturo are both well-educated men who should know that you do not have to wait for Obote’s return to charge him in court. Suspects are charged in absentia, and a warrant is issued for their arrest. The current remarks are only to scare Obote. If, for 18 years, the NRM has not preferred any charges, I doubt they have any against him.
Edward Okadapao
Kampala
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