ugnet_: Museveni speaks on Abia attack

[Matekopoko]

Museveni speaks on Abia attack
By Frank Nyakairu
Feb 9, 2004

KAMPALA - Last week's attack on a camp for the internally displaced in Lira in which about 47 people died was not a massacre, President Museveni has said."It was not a massacre as Mr Pike put it," the President said at the weekend.

He was speaking to the editors in chief of The Monitor and The New Vision, Mr Wafula Oguttu and Mr William Pike, whom he invited to State House, Nakasero, on Saturday.Mr Museveni wanted to make a clarification on the incident, which he said was not presented accurately by the media.

At least 47 civilians died in Thursday's gruesome attack by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army on Abia internally displaced persons camp. The camp is located in Moroto County, 25km north of Lira town. On Friday, the Vision carried a report on the incident with a banner headline reading, Massacre.

Museveni said a massacre means killing defenceless people. He said the Amuka militia fought gallantly and repulsed the bandits, as he called the Joseph Kony-led rebels.Museveni said it was during the fighting that some innocent civilians were killed.

The President was particularly concerned that the media did not bring out the "vital and commendable role played" by the militia in resisting the rebel attack.In his statement to the two media chiefs, Museveni criticised the UPDF area commanders for the mistakes made before and during the attack.

He said the UPDF made two big mistakes. Mistake number one, he said, was for the commanders to send off the Amuka militia on a lone mission to search for the rebels. He said all the commanders know that searching for rebels is the work of the UPDF.

The militia fighters are supposed to guard the rear and the roads. Mistake number two, he added, was that after the militia fighters sighted the bandits in Akwanga sub-county, they immediately informed the UPDF. The latter, however, did not respond as



"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