By Norman S Miwambo
Winnie Byanyima (centre) and her husband Dr Kizza Besigye - arguably the most harassed political family in East Africa.
It is feared that the leader of Uganda’s main opposition party, the Forum for democratic Change (FDC) Dr Kizza Besigye may be under house arrest following the deployment of several security officers that are now guarding any movements in and out of his house at Kasangati, a few miles from the country’s capital Kampala. Dr. Besigye, who has been spearheading the ‘Walk to Work’ protests for the last month, is now under house arrest and police surrounded his home on Monday, although a police spokesperson denied the allegations.
Dr Besigye who is a former personal physician to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, came second to Mr Museveni during last February’s general elections that the opposition parties claimed had been rigged by the Museveni-led National Resistance Movement (NRM). Dr. Besigye has been the main participant in the “Walk to Work” protests which have been appealing to the people to leave their cars at home every Monday and Thursday of the week and walk to their places of work to draw the government’s attention to the rising prices of fuel and food prices.
In a telephone conversation with The London Evening Post (TLEP), Dr Besigye’s wife Winnie Byanyima, a veteran Ugandan politician in her own right, who works with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York as a director for Gender in the Bureau for Development Policy said: “I can’t understand this anymore. Just after I came out of the gate to catch my flight to New York, armed police stopped me. I feared that they [the police] were going to spray some chemicals on me or were going to kill me and I raised the car windows, I thought they were going to kill me.” Sounding quite frightened, Mrs Besigye added: “They blocked my car and they towed us to the police.”
She went on: “When we reached the police, they left us to go. I feared and we tried to get back home because I had already missed my flight but still they blocked me. I’m worried because Kakooza Mutale has been coming and taking pictures of our house. He [Kakooza Mutale] has been taking pictures everywhere; I really don’t know why he trespasses on our properties,” said Mrs Besigye. Kakooza Mutale is a notorious pro-Museveni thug who heads the Kalangala Action Plan (KAP), a militia whose record is well documented by several Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports since as early as 2003. Several reports have documented and Kakooza Mutale’s KAP of gross human rights abuses.
Editor, this partisan force have embarrassed our nation. They were not checking every car, they were simply waiting on to see what car drives out of Besigye’s compound and get it towed. The good lesson they have learnt is not to smash Dr. Besigye’s car but to tow it away otherwise let them give us another good excuse of stopping Winnie. If they were not bothered about Dr. Besigye’s movements, then why pick on this particular car coming out of his gate? They were there because they knew that it was a Monday and Besigye had vowed to continue walking and they will be there on Thursday too.
Nabakooba has lied to the entire world. We heard rumours even before Besigye returned that government was getting a helicopter to fly him to his compound and keep him under house arrest. Careful of government’s plan, he refused the offer but the last one has come true.
Editor, initially the president and all his subordinates said that he will crush those who will walk to work. It became a song in Uganda that walk to work, get crushed and all ministers, police, army, permanent secretaries echoed this message. A sudden change later emerged after realizing that they would be defeated someday by protesters who had vowed to depose government if they cracked them down to the effect that people should walk to work because its normal and healthy and the president has never condemned walkers but said let people walk. It is believed that the international community had spent hours in meetings and passed an ultimatum giving the Ugandan leader less time to fix the situation.
What we now see days down the road is that with the increasing support not only in Uganda but world wide of the main opposition leader, any injury on him sparks off a riot so the best thing to do is to keep him under house arrest. Today, people are hitting on look-alikes of perpetrators of injury on FDC leader. Many security operatives have suffered due to their brutal attack on the opposition and the government is beginning to realise that its wise not to injure Besigye. Restricting his movement will make people stop walking to work but they are wrong. People need solutions and are waiting for the president’s promises he made during the swearing in ceremony to come true. The police cannot earmark one leader and think it will solve the problems of the country, the walkers are bigger than just one person and solutions should start emerging.
http://www.thelondoneveningpost.com/uganda-police-deny-kizza-besigye-under-house-arrest/