Gook ----Original Message Follows---- Subject: East African-when you can't tell oppressor from victim Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 09:24:50 +0200 When You Can't Tell Oppressor from Victim The East African (Nairobi) ANALYSIS October 14, 2002 Posted to the web October 18, 2002 By Charles Onyango-Obbo Nairobi Early evening last Thursday, truckfuls of armed police and Criminal Investigation Department and Military Intelligence officers cordoned off the offices of The Monitor. The newspaper offices on 8th Street Industrial Area, and the downtown offices that house the Monitor FM radio station, the advertising, marketing, circulation offices and book publishing division, were sealed off too. The security officers didn't have a warrant, and laughed in amusement when staff asked them for it. For the next seven hours, no one could leave or enter the building except a few journalists who were out and had been called back. The security men went through every document, checked all the computers, and eventually carried off all the mobile phones, boxfuls of documents, computer central processing units and servers, locked up the premises, and asked everyone to leave. It was getting to be 12:30am. Half of Friday's issue was printed and parcelled. The rest of the paper never got to run, and the half that was remained undelivered - to this day. To their credit, the officers were courteous and good humoured as much as they could be. Two days later, they returned to go through the shelves they had not searched and to carry away more computers. It was unprecedented, and the authorities say it was part of an investigation relating to a story in The Monitor newspaper alleging that a helicopter gunship might have been shot down by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army in the war in the north. The episode was humbling - and frightening. First, it underscored the fact that where press freedom is granted by the goodness of the state, not social change or mass political struggle, it can very easily be taken away by that same state. And, this is the distressing part, you really have few other "good" men and women to turn to for help. So The Monitor was closed. People called into the talkshows to complain and express outrage. But otherwise there was helplessness. Until the state wished it, the paper remains closed, and the reporters locked out, guarded by armed police. During the search, another curious fact about people who do repressive work for the state emerged. Even the most grim-faced of the over 40 detectives and military intelligence officers seemed not to be too happy doing their job. At the beginning, many were cheerful, exchanging jokes with the staff, but as the hours wore on, a sense of sadness and weary gloom took over. When it was all over and the workers were gathered in the yard where the detectives were also now collected, you could hardly tell the difference between the tormentor and the tormented from the expressions on their faces. The actor and singer Ruben Blades once serenaded us about this phenomenon. That the members of the security who killed and terrorised people in their hundreds of thousands in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, are just like us in many ways. Many have nice homes, they have beautiful girl friends and wives, children whom they kiss goodnight, and they drive regular cars or take the bus to drop their children in the same schools where the kids of their victims go. Some are people whom you meet at weddings or birthday parties of family and friends. For the first time since the dictator Idi Amin was overthrown in April 1979, there will be no independent daily on Uganda's streets for days running. Though most of us are hoping and praying that The Monitor will be back on the street some day, most people who had to come down on the ground to put it to sleep, like the executioner, would perhaps have been happier if they could have done the job with a hood over their heads. And while we are at it, don't bet on it - this might be the last column you read from this writer as a free man. Charles Onyango-Obbo is Managing Editor of The Monitor newspaper of Uganda. Comments\Views about this article ________________________________________________________________ Keine verlorenen Lotto-Quittungen, keine vergessenen Gewinne mehr! Beim WEB.DE Lottoservice: http://tippen2.web.de/?x=13
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