OPINION: Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is not Museveni’s enemy No 1; the security people hammering him are
‘The buck stops with the president’, any president, so they say, and history confirms.
Why?
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I gave Museveni distinction, when his then Intelligence Chief Commander Jim Muhwezi Katugugu ordered that I be given a “VIP” arrest and interrogation for two weeks in 1987. I was never handicapped, slapped or in any way verbally of physically abused. The nearest thing to a threat was the revelation by my chief interrogator, Emmanuel Katsigazi, that Obote's security personnel had attempted to castrate him while he was a student at Makerere.’
Fast-forward 35 years to 2022.
“EU in their statement, said the relevant Ugandan authorities should urgently ensure a comprehensive investigation into all these reported abuses, including the events of 18th and 19 November 2020” (Nile Post, EU joins US in condemning torture of Ugandans, calls for immediate release of political prisoners, 7th February 2022).
The most relevant Ugandan authority today happens to be president Museveni.
Under Idi Amin, thousands of my relatives, friends, workmates and acquaintances were murdered. Fellow civil aviation officials Febian Rweigyembe, Badru Muhindu and Lawrence Mawanda were among them, battered to death for “collaborating” in the Israeli Entebbe airport raid on 3rd July 1976!
Yet, I do not for a movement believe Idi Amin personally killed any of them. But, like all Ugandans who also lost their loved ones in that period; Idi Amin was responsible for the near-genocidal massacres, and that is why we have never allowed his body back to Uganda for burial.
The real killers under Amin are either still living, or already buried in Uganda, “respectable” citizens.
Under Milton Obote, hundreds of thousands were killed in the Luwero Triangle and across the country, especially in Buganda and west line sub regions. Milton Obote, who never signed a death warrant for capital offences; leave touching a gun in his entire life; is today remembered as the chief butcher of Luwero, Arua and Ajumani.
That was why there were reports Obote would be shot on arrival, if he dared to return to Uganda. And that was why he died in exile, and was never accorded a state funeral, now given to tribal chiefs.
The real killers under Obote remain anonymous, living, or already dead with their reputation intact.
During and at the end of Tito Okello’s brief administration, convoys of government and private lorries as well as passenger cars, laden with looted property, were seen heading north as the NRA closed on Kampala.
The elderly Gen Tito Okello did not and could not have personally taken part in the violent robberies by his soldiers, not least because he was busy in Nairobi, attending peace talks, also known as peace jokes with Museveni. Yet, Tito Okello is immortalised as the head the most violent administration in the history of Uganda, according to many people.
Some of the real violent robbers and killers in uniform under Tito Okello were incorporated into the NRA/M.
That brings us directly to the NRA/M administration, led by Yoweri Museveni, who prides himself on having brought peace to Uganda.
Yet, as the EU and USA statements have suggested, no matter what Museveni and his real supporters and fortune hunters want us and the world to believe, there are mounting reports indicating that human rights situation in Uganda is today just as bad or worse than they were under Obote, Amin and Tito Okello.
These reports go back to 2004, when I was International envoy representing Kizza Besigye to the UK and the European Union.
In that year, the internationally reputable Human Rights Watch, whose reports informs donor countries and investors to shape their policy, did produce a report, ‘State of Pain: Torture in Uganda’. In its summary, the report said:
“The use of torture as a tool of interrogation is foremost among an escalation in human rights violations by Ugandan security and military forces since 2001. In what most victims consider a state-sanctioned campaign of political suppression, official and ad hoc military, security and intelligence agencies of the Ugandan government have proliferated, practicing illegal and arbitrary detention and unlawful killing/extrajudicial executions, and using torture to force victims to confess to links to the government’s past political opponents or current rebel groups...
These abuses are not acknowledged by the Ugandan government that instead fosters an enabling climate in which such human rights abuses persist and increase while perpetrators of torture, rather than be held accountable, act with impunity.
Forms of torture in use in Uganda include kandoya (tying hands and feet behind the victim) and suspension from the ceiling of victims tied kandoya, “Liverpool” water torture (forcing the victim to lie face up, mouth open, under a flowing water spigot), severe and repeated beatings with metal or wooden poles, cables, hammers and sticks with nails protruding, pistol-whipping, electrocution, male and female genital and body mutilation, death threats (through showing fresh graves, corpses and snakes), strangulation, restraint, isolation, and verbal abuse and humiliation. Some of these practices have resulted in the death of detainees in custody...”
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uganda0304.pdf
Granted, some of the reports about human rights abuse under Museveni may well be based on fake news, a political dirty trick as old as mankind.
But as Museveni’s predecessors, particularly Obote would testify, it was a combination of the inhuman behaviour by some of his security officials and fake news about the atrocities in Luwero, which finally ended his political career, in ignominy.
And that was long before the advent of the world-wide social media network, feeding real time news, complete with video images, both real and fake.
That is why we believe Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, Kizza Besigye and other opposition activists are not Museveni’s enemy No 1. The security people hammering him are. Their behaviours will leave an indelible mark on Museveni’s legacy.
As it was with Obote, Amin and Okello, the more people are tortured by Museveni’s security personnel, the deeper and farther is the president’s legacy dragged into the sewer of history.
The real killers under Museveni will join their predecessors under Amin, Obote and Okello in remaining anonymous, forever.
Is Museveni willing to join Obote, Amin and Okello in paying the price for the crimes, which some of his security people are committing against humanity?
If not, he should stop them, today, not tomorrow.
Sam Akaki
