Mw. Semakula,
Some netters are still in denial for some selfish reasons. People like Mulindwa, Akanga and Matek who claim to have been in Luweero or near Luweero at that time did not "see" these atrocities happening! Their anti Ganda campains are an indication that they still want UPC to continue where they stopped if given a chance. What future do Uganda have under UPC?
J. SSenyange
Note: forwarded message attached.
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--- Begin Message -------Original Message Follows---- From: Joicye nansikombi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: ugnet_: "Kasita ffe twebaka ku tulo" Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:47:35 -0800 (PST) Dear Ugandans: I salute to all of you and Happy New Year. Fellow Ugandans, I am replying to all those letters or people who were interviewed. I must say there is something absolutely wrong with Ugandans. May be because they have been under confusion for the last 18 years and they are just dummy, they can not remember anything in this world. You can sleep!!, Yes you can sleep. I am asking you one Question: Where did Yoweri Museveni fight in Gorilla War? In heaven! or In the Ocean? Museveni Kaguta Quarrel, Nasty killer, Layer he killed our children up to day in the North of Uganda. Lied the whole world and now the world has came to know him. he continued his killing by killing Hima in Rwanda, and Congo with his nottorious Government. Musveni is A Saddist, Hitla of the Mordern World. When they entered Uganda while fighing, What Uniforms where they wearing!!! not of those he had killed?? I am asking you these questions: Before Museven and his Nasty Government came to Power in Uganda. Did we have houses/buildings? My answer is We had very very beautiful, tall and clearn Buildings. Which I understand are full of corrupted click, family Tree. What happened to our beautiful Hospitals? Roads, Buses to help people for poor peoples transportation? Who killed people in Lweroro Not him? Where are Jobs for people to enjoy Uganda? Are the jobs for the people of Uganda or for the Family Tree? I have never seen any President in Uganda who forced people in the Camps as if there not in their own country, Except Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Ugandas have suffered. No have I seen people in thousands being burnt in Rail Wagons like fish. Except Museveni's Government. I have never seen many Uganda running out Uganda than during the Movement Government. There allot to write but I feel bad because My country as been robbed and denied life. Museveni has killed my people and the world is just looking as though it is Museven who owns Uganda. Fellow Uganda What did we do to deserve this time of Government? Please, Lord hear our prayers and remove this monster Museveni and His NRM/NRM-O. Only his family and Family tree are enjoying while ours are suffering and dying. Fellow Ugandans Weak up and remove that Monster. Let it go for good. Weak up Fellow Ugandans. Our Uganda is blooding Blood. their beloved Country more than I have seen during Museveni's Government. st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) } It is more than that We can work the whole night without anybody disturbing; soldiers who used to disturb us no longer do that. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mitayo Potosi Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 2:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ugnet_: "Kasita ffe twebaka ku tulo" "Kasita ffe twebaka ku tulo" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 18 years of Movt rule By Mercy Nalugo and Patrick Onyango Jan 27, 2004 As Uganda celebrated 18 years under the rule of President Museveni and his Movement group yesterday, The Monitor’s Mercy Nalugo and Patrick Onyango went around Kampala streets asking about the best and worst of this government: -Ms. Nansikombi,
You wrote, in part,:
"I have never seen any President in Uganda who forced people in the Camps as if there not in their own country, Except Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Ugandas have suffered."
This may very well be true, as I do not know how old you are. But here is a historical fact: Obote put hundreds of thousands of Ugandan in camps in the now infamous "Luweero Triangle" and his regime murdered at least 300,000 Ugandans -- mostly Baganda -- during his second misrule of 1980-1985. Other estimate put Obote's massacres at 500,000 victims, i.e. 100,000 per year or ca. 10,000 per month -- which is well over 300 Ugandans every single day that Obote misruled Uganda in the 1980s!!
There is a lot of documentary evidence of Obote's tryranny and institutionalization of violence in Uganda as well as abuse of office & violation of human rights of citizens. This includes, but is not limited to:
1. Reports of organizations like Amnesty International
2. Minority Rights Group Report No. 66
3. A video shot in Luweero Triangle in the early 1980s showing people in camps, some massacres, etc. Several people have a copy of this video, including me. You can also get some of BBC's video footage of the same era.
4, Many articles in newspapers like New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, etc, etc.
Additionally, you may refer to the U.S. Country Study for Uganda. Here is an excerpt:
The Second Obote Regime: 1981-85
“In February 1981, shortly after the new Obote government took office, with Paulo Muwanga as vice president and minister of defense, a former Military Commission member, Yoweri Museveni, and his armed supporters declared themselves the National Resistance Army (NRA). Museveni vowed to overthrow Obote by means of a popular rebellion, and what became known as "the war in the bush" began. Several other underground groups also emerged to attempt to sabotage the new regime, but they were eventually crushed. Museveni, who had guerrilla war experience with the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de Libertaçâo de Moçambique--Frelimo), campaigned in rural areas hostile to Obote's government, especially central and western Buganda and the western regions of Ankole and “Bunyoro.
The Obote government's four-year military effort to destroy its challengers resulted in vast areas of devastation and greater loss of life than during the eight years of Amin's rule. UNLA's many Acholi and Langi had been hastily enrolled with minimal training and little sense of discipline. Although they were survivors of Amin's genocidal purges of northeast Uganda, in the 1980s they were armed and in uniform, conducting similar actions against Bantu-speaking Ugandans in the south, with whom they appeared to feel no empathy or even pity. In early 1983, to eliminate rural support for Museveni's guerrillas the area of Luwero District, north of Kampala, was targeted for a massive population removal affecting almost 750,000 people. These artificially created refugees were packed into several internment camps subject to military control, which in reality meant military abuse. Civilians outside the! camps, in what came to be known as the "Luwero Triangle," were presumed to be guerrillas or guerrilla sympathizers and were treated accordingly. The farms of this highly productive agricultural area were looted--roofs, doors, and even door frames were stolen by UNLA troops. Civilian loss of life was extensive, as evidenced some years later by piles of human skulls in bush clearings and alongside rural roads.
“The army also concentrated on the northwestern corner of Uganda, in what was then West Nile District. Bordering Sudan, West Nile had provided the ethnic base for much of Idi Amin's earlier support and had enjoyed relative prosperity under his rule. Having born the brunt of Amin's anti-Acholi massacres in previous years, Acholi soldiers avenged themselves on inhabitants of Amin's home region, whom they blamed for their losses. In one famous incident in June 1981, Ugandan Army soldiers attacked a Catholic mission where local refugees had sought sanctuary. When the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported a subsequent massacre, the government expelled it from Uganda.
“Despite these activities, Obote's government, unlike Amin's regime, was sensitive to its international image and realized the importance of securing foreign aid for the nation's economic recovery. Obote had sought and followed the advice of the International Monetary Fund ( IMF), even though the austerity measures ran counter to his own ideology. He devalued the Uganda shilling by 100 percent, attempted to facilitate the export of cash crops, and postponed any plans he may once have entertained for reestablishing one-party rule. The continued sufferance of the DP, although much harried and abused by UPC stalwarts, became an important symbol to international donors. The government's inability to eliminate Museveni and win the civil war, however, sapped its economic strength, and the occupation of a large part of the country by an army hostile to the Ugandans living there furthered discontent with the regime. ! Abductions by the police, as well as the detentions and disappearances so characteristic of the Amin period, recurred. In place of torture at the infamous State Research Bureau at Nakasero, victims met the same fate at so-called "Nile Mansions." Amnesty International, a human rights organization, issued a chilling report of routine torture of civilian detainees at military barracks scattered across southern Uganda.
The overall death toll from 1981 to 1985 was estimated as high as 500,000. Obote, once seen by the donor community as the one man with the experience and will to restore Uganda's fortunes, now appeared to be a liability to recovery.
“In this deteriorating military and economic situation, Obote subordinated other matters to a military victory over Museveni. North Korean military advisers were invited to take part against the NRA rebels in what was to be a final campaign that won neither British nor United States approval. But the army was warweary , and after the death of the highly capable General Oyite Ojok in a helicopter accident at the end of 1983, it began to split along ethnic lines. Acholi soldiers complained that they were given too much frontline action and too few rewards for their services. Obote delayed appointing a successor to Oyite Ojok for as long as possible. In the end, he appointed a Langi to the post and attempted to counter the objection of Acholi officers by spying on them, reviving his old paramilitary counterweight, the mostly Langi Special Force Units, and thus repeating some of the actions that l! ed to his overthrow by Amin. As if determined to replay the January 1971 events, Obote once again left the capital after giving orders for the arrest of a leading Acholi commander, Brigadier (later Lieutenant General) Basilio Olara Okello, who mobilized troops and entered Kampala on July 27, 1985. Obote, together with a large entourage, fled the country for Zambia. This time, unlike the last, Obote allegedly took much of the national treasury with him.”
The Interim Period: 1979-80
A month before the liberation of Kampala, representatives of twenty-two Ugandan civilian and military groups were hastily called together at Moshi, Tanzania, to try to agree on an interim civilian government once Amin was removed. Called the Unity Conference in the hope that unity might prevail, it managed to establish the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) as political representative of the UNLA. Dr. Yusuf Lule, former principal of Makerere University, became head of the UNLF executive committee. As an academic rather than a politician, Lule was not regarded as a threat to any of the contending factions. Shortly after Amin's departure, Lule and the UNLF moved to Kampala, where they established an interim government. Lule became president, advised by a temporary parliament, the National Consultative Council (NCC). The NCC, in turn, was composed of representatives from the Unity Conference.
Conflict surfaced immediately between Lule and some of the more radical of the council members who saw him as too conservative, too autocratic, and too willing as a Muganda to listen to advice from other Baganda. After only three months, with the apparent approval of Nyerere, whose troops still controlled Kampala, Lule was forcibly removed from office and exiled. He was replaced by Godfrey Binaisa, a Muganda like Lule, but one who had previously served as a high-ranking member of Obote's UPC. It was not an auspicious start to the rebuilding of a new Uganda, which required political and economic stability. Indeed, the quarrels within the NCC, which Binaisa enlarged to 127 members, revealed that many rival and would-be politicians who had returned from exile were resuming their self-interested operating styles. Ugandans who endured the deprivations of the Amin era became even more disillusioned with their leaders. Binaisa managed to stay i! n office longer than Lule, but his inability to gain control over a burgeoning new military presence proved to be his downfall.
At the beginning of the interim government, the military numbered fewer than 1,000 troops who had fought alongside the Tanzanian People's Defence Force (TPDF) to expel Amin. The army was back to the size of the original King's African Rifles (KAR) at independence in 1962. But in 1979, in an attempt to consolidate support for the future, such leaders as Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Major General (later Chief of Staff) David Oyite Ojok began to enroll thousands of recruits into what were rapidly becoming their private armies. Museveni's 80 original soldiers grew to 8,000; Ojok's original 600 became 24,000. When Binaisa sought to curb the use of these militias, which were harassing and detaining political opponents, he was overthrown in a military coup on May 10, 1980. The coup was engineered by Ojok, Museveni, and others acting under the general direction of Paulo Muwanga, Obote's right-hand man and chair of the Military Commission. The TPDF! was still providing necessary security while Uganda's police force--which had been decimated by Amin--was rebuilt, but Nyerere refused to help Binaisa retain power. Many Ugandans claimed that although Nyerere did not impose his own choice on Uganda, he indirectly facilitated the return to power of his old friend and ally, Milton Obote. In any case, the Military Commission headed by Muwanga effectively governed Uganda during the six months leading up to the national elections of December 1980.
Further evidence of the militarization of Ugandan politics was provided by the proposed expenditures of the newly empowered Military Commission. Security and defense were to be allotted more than 30 percent of the national revenues. For a country desperately seeking funds for economic recovery from the excesses of the previous military regime, this allocation seemed unreasonable to civilian leaders.
Shortly after Muwanga's 1980 coup, Obote made a triumphant return from Tanzania. In the months before the December elections, he began to rally his former UPC supporters. Ominously, in view of recent Ugandan history, he often appeared on the platform with General Oyite-Ojok, a fellow Langi. Obote also began to speak of the need to return to a UPC one-party state.
The national election on December 10, 1980, was a crucial turning point for Uganda. It was, after all, the first election in eighteen years. Several parties contested, the most important of which were Obote's UPC and the DP led by Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere. Most of Uganda's Roman Catholics were DP members, along with many others whose main concern was to prevent the return of another Obote regime. Because the Military Commission, as the acting government, was dominated by Obote supporters (notably chairman Paulo Muwanga), the DP and other contenders faced formidable obstacles. By election day, the UPC had achieved some exceptional advantages, summarized by Minority Rights Group Report Number 66 as follows: Seventeen UPC candidates were declared "unopposed" by the simple procedure of not allowing DP or other candidates to run against them. Fourteen district commissioners, who were expected to supervise local polli! ng, were replaced with UPC nominees. The chief justice of Uganda, to whom complaints of election irregularities would have to be made, was replaced with a UPC member. In a number of districts, non-UPC candidates were arrested, and one was murdered. Even before the election, the government press and Radio Uganda appeared to treat the UPC as the victor. Muwanga insisted that each party have a separate ballot box on election day, thus negating the right of secret ballot. There were a number of other moves to aid the UPC, including Muwanga's statement that the future parliament would also contain an unspecified number of unelected representatives of the army and other interest groups.
Polling appeared to be heavy on election day, and by the end of the voting, the DP, on the basis of its own estimates, declared victory in 81 of 126 constituencies. The British Broadcasting Corporation and Voice of America broadcast the news of the DP triumph, and Kampala's streets were filled with DP celebrants. At this point, Muwanga seized control of the Electoral Commission, along with the power to count the ballots, and declared that anyone disputing his count would be subject to a heavy fine and five years in jail. Eighteen hours later, Muwanga announced a UPC victory, with seventy-two seats. Some DP candidates claimed the ballot boxes were simply switched to give their own vote tally to the UPC runner-up. Nevertheless, a small contingent of neutral election watchers, the Commonwealth Observer Group, declared itself satisfied with the validity of the election. Some Ugandans criticized the Commonwealth Observer Group, suggesting tha! t members of the group measured African elections by different standards than those used elsewhere or that they feared civil war if the results were questioned. Indeed, popular perception of a stolen election actually helped bring about the civil war the Commonwealth Observer Group may have feared...."
Source: http://countrystudies.us/uganda/
Obote, you may not recall, is the mentor of both Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni as both were his protoges. Museveni was an operative in the notorious General Service -- a secret police unit that terrorized Ugandans in Obote I. During most of Obote I, Buganda was under a state of emergence (1966 -1971). There several massacres in that period, e.g. students of St. Mary's College, Kisubi, Nakulabye, etc. There was also detention without trial, and many other terrible things that Obote visited upon us. Some are detailed in Grace Ibingira's book, African Upheals Since Independence -- which I have excerpted on Ugandanet quite a bit, with more to come.
Those who forget history are likely to repeat the same mistakes ... we must never forget how UPC decimated and brutalized us!
Ssemakula
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