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The Monitor (Kampala)
October 3, 2003
Posted to the web October 3, 2003
Patrick Onyango
Parliament
Lawmakers from Teso have reacted angrily to UPC's threat to sue political leaders from the sub-region for recruiting residents to fight rebels.
Members of the Teso Parliamentary Group have asked the UPC to withdraw the threat made recently and apologise.
"We condemn in the strongest terms the misguided and anti-people sentiments of Dr [James] Rwanyarare and demand that he withdraws his threats with immediate effect and with apologies to the people of Teso," reads a statement issued by the MPs at a news conference in Kampala yesterday.
Rwanyarare is the chairman of UPC's Presidential Policy Commission.
The party's criticism stems from the mobilisation by some MPs of civilians in the sub-region to fight the Joseph Kony-led rebels.
The civilians, some of them former rebels of the defunct Uganda Peoples Army, are fighting under the Arrow Group militia.
The Lord's Resistance Army rebels invaded Teso on June 15.
Mr Patrick Amuriat (Kumi) said that Rwanyarare recently wrote to the leadership in Teso threatening court action over the recruitment.
The Minister of State for Health and Soroti MP Soroti Municipality, Mr Mike Mukula; Mr John Eresu (Kaberamaido); the RDC of Kasese, Mr Musa Ecweru; Soroti LC-V chairman Emily Otekat, among others, received Rwanyarare's letter.
"Admittedly mistakes could have been made in the process of fighting the enemy.
However, at such a time of desperate need, the people of Teso deserve a supportive hand rather than condemnation from anybody," says the statement signed by Amuriat, the chairman of the group, and Secretary Francis Epetait (Ngora).
Amuriat said that militia groups have been used in some parts of the country before but UPC kept quiet.
He said that militias were used in Acholi and Lango but the UPC did not say anything.
"Interestingly, even during the early 1980s when UPC was in power, a local militia was formed in Teso to contain the marauding Karimojong cattle rustlers," Amuriat said.
