Regime of tyranny and torture back to haunt Uganda
By Adrian Blomfield in Kampala
(Filed: 19/03/2005) Daily Telegraph.
Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes;
chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin's infamous torture
chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the
few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass
executions.
Welcome to President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda. One of Britain's
favourite African states in recent years has, almost unnoticed in the
West, become a sinister land where a corrupt regime uses its secret
police to rule through fear.
President Yoweri Museveni
The reasons for this transition are not hard to fathom. Mr Museveni
has ruled Uganda since 1986, when his rebels marched triumphantly
into the capital Kampala. Many of his countrymen believe he now wants
to recast himself as that most Afr ican of leaders: a president for
life.
Signalling his intent to jettison the vestigial trappings of
democracy his government still professes, Mr Museveni has set out to
remove a constitutional provision that prevents him from standing in
elections next year.
Not all Ugandans are keen on the idea, but the government has ways of
making them change their mind.
Last year, Yasin, a taxi driver who occasionally chauffeured a senior
opposition official around the countryside, was woken by a loud
rapping at his door a few hours before dawn. The men who had come to
arrest him were not policemen, but members of the widely feared
Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
Yasin knew that the CMI, a shadowy spy agency directly answerable to
the president, had no powers to arrest anybody. But he also knew
better than to question his captors.
He was taken to Makindye barracks, where some of the worst atrocities
of Amin's infa mous State Research Bureau, which used to force inmates
to beat each other to death with sledgehammers, took place in the
1970s.
"Every day for a week, they would hang me upside down and beat me
with clubs," Yasin said. "They wanted to know names of people working
for the opposition. I kept saying I didn't know any, but they
wouldn't believe me." On his third day, Yasin watched as a fellow
inmate, an elderly man accused of recruiting for the main opposition
alliance, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), was killed using a
method known as "Liverpool". The victim's head was placed in a bag
that was repeatedly filled with water. To breathe, he had to drink it
all, but the more he drank, the more bloated his belly became until
his innards ruptured and he died in a pool of his own urine.
The official existence of political parties was only allowed last
year, under considerable western pressure. Until then Mr Museveni
operated what he called a no-party system, in which every Ugandan
belonged to an entity known as The Movement, which was headed by the
president.
In theory, the philosophy was supposed to rid Uganda of the ethnic
and political divisions that helped cause the civil wars and
dictatorships that characterised much of the country's history since
independence from Britain in 1962. In practice it has allowed Mr
Museveni to exert total control over most of his people.
The leader of the FDC, Kizza Besigye, in exile in South Africa, has
instructed his campaigners to dole out copies of Animal Farm during
party rallies.
But most people are too frightened to attend. Secret police
infiltrate the rallies, noting down those who attend. It is usually
supporters and low ranking FDC members who are taken to Makindye.
As a means of spreading fear, it is an extremely effective method.
Philip and his wife Juliet were picked up in January, accused of
renting out their hall south of the capital for an opposition meeting.
Like many fellow suspects, they were accused of supporting the
People's Redemption Army (PRA), a shadowy rebel outfit the government
links to the FDC. The Foreign Office Minister, Chris Mullin, says
that it is likely the PRA does not exist.
"Every night I was hung upside down over a pit of snakes while my
wife was raped by army officers," said Philip, who was held in Room
21 of Mbale Police Station, another Amin torture chamber. "One time
we had to move five dead bodies into a truck. Another time I was made
to dig my own grave." Like Yasin, Philip and Juliet were released.
Their captors told them to report what had happened to fellow
villagers, but threatened them with death if they told anyone else.
Certainly things are not as bad as they were under Amin, who killed
half-a-million people in eight years of bloodshed. Mr Museveni
remains popular i n many quarters for bringing stability to the
country.
The president was long seen as an African role model in the West for
his willingness to introduce economic reforms demanded by the World
Bank.
But many donors are now disgusted both by the repression and by the
corruption in Mr Museveni's cabinet, many of whom are relatives of
the president. "Museveni hoodwinked many donors for a long time and
people wanted to see the glass as half full," a diplomat said. "We
are now learning our lesson." But that lesson may have come too late.
A gang of young thugs, known as the Kalangala Action Plan (KAP), is
allegedly preparing to disrupt the elections. Styled on the youth
wing of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party in Zimbabwe, the KAP
was an effective tool of intimidation during flawed 2001 elections
won by Mr Museveni.
By Adrian Blomfield in Kampala
(Filed: 19/03/2005) Daily Telegraph.
Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes;
chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin's infamous torture
chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the
few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass
executions.
Welcome to President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda. One of Britain's
favourite African states in recent years has, almost unnoticed in the
West, become a sinister land where a corrupt regime uses its secret
police to rule through fear.
President Yoweri Museveni
The reasons for this transition are not hard to fathom. Mr Museveni
has ruled Uganda since 1986, when his rebels marched triumphantly
into the capital Kampala. Many of his countrymen believe he now wants
to recast himself as that most Afr ican of leaders: a president for
life.
Signalling his intent to jettison the vestigial trappings of
democracy his government still professes, Mr Museveni has set out to
remove a constitutional provision that prevents him from standing in
elections next year.
Not all Ugandans are keen on the idea, but the government has ways of
making them change their mind.
Last year, Yasin, a taxi driver who occasionally chauffeured a senior
opposition official around the countryside, was woken by a loud
rapping at his door a few hours before dawn. The men who had come to
arrest him were not policemen, but members of the widely feared
Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
Yasin knew that the CMI, a shadowy spy agency directly answerable to
the president, had no powers to arrest anybody. But he also knew
better than to question his captors.
He was taken to Makindye barracks, where some of the worst atrocities
of Amin's infa mous State Research Bureau, which used to force inmates
to beat each other to death with sledgehammers, took place in the
1970s.
"Every day for a week, they would hang me upside down and beat me
with clubs," Yasin said. "They wanted to know names of people working
for the opposition. I kept saying I didn't know any, but they
wouldn't believe me." On his third day, Yasin watched as a fellow
inmate, an elderly man accused of recruiting for the main opposition
alliance, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), was killed using a
method known as "Liverpool". The victim's head was placed in a bag
that was repeatedly filled with water. To breathe, he had to drink it
all, but the more he drank, the more bloated his belly became until
his innards ruptured and he died in a pool of his own urine.
The official existence of political parties was only allowed last
year, under considerable western pressure. Until then Mr Museveni
operated what he called a no-party system, in which every Ugandan
belonged to an entity known as The Movement, which was headed by the
president.
In theory, the philosophy was supposed to rid Uganda of the ethnic
and political divisions that helped cause the civil wars and
dictatorships that characterised much of the country's history since
independence from Britain in 1962. In practice it has allowed Mr
Museveni to exert total control over most of his people.
The leader of the FDC, Kizza Besigye, in exile in South Africa, has
instructed his campaigners to dole out copies of Animal Farm during
party rallies.
But most people are too frightened to attend. Secret police
infiltrate the rallies, noting down those who attend. It is usually
supporters and low ranking FDC members who are taken to Makindye.
As a means of spreading fear, it is an extremely effective method.
Philip and his wife Juliet were picked up in January, accused of
renting out their hall south of the capital for an opposition meeting.
Like many fellow suspects, they were accused of supporting the
People's Redemption Army (PRA), a shadowy rebel outfit the government
links to the FDC. The Foreign Office Minister, Chris Mullin, says
that it is likely the PRA does not exist.
"Every night I was hung upside down over a pit of snakes while my
wife was raped by army officers," said Philip, who was held in Room
21 of Mbale Police Station, another Amin torture chamber. "One time
we had to move five dead bodies into a truck. Another time I was made
to dig my own grave." Like Yasin, Philip and Juliet were released.
Their captors told them to report what had happened to fellow
villagers, but threatened them with death if they told anyone else.
Certainly things are not as bad as they were under Amin, who killed
half-a-million people in eight years of bloodshed. Mr Museveni
remains popular i n many quarters for bringing stability to the
country.
The president was long seen as an African role model in the West for
his willingness to introduce economic reforms demanded by the World
Bank.
But many donors are now disgusted both by the repression and by the
corruption in Mr Museveni's cabinet, many of whom are relatives of
the president. "Museveni hoodwinked many donors for a long time and
people wanted to see the glass as half full," a diplomat said. "We
are now learning our lesson." But that lesson may have come too late.
A gang of young thugs, known as the Kalangala Action Plan (KAP), is
allegedly preparing to disrupt the elections. Styled on the youth
wing of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party in Zimbabwe, the KAP
was an effective tool of intimidation during flawed 2001 elections
won by Mr Museveni.
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