Wednesday, 19 August 2020

Bobi Wine: My Torture at the Hands of America’s Favorite African Strongman

 

 Credit...Reuters

My Torture at the Hands of America’s Favorite African Strongman

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/opinion/uganda-museveni-repression.html

 
Yoweri Museveni, the country’s president and the Pentagon’s closest military ally in Africa, deploys security forces to assault opposition lawmakers.
Mr. Wine is a musician and a member of the Ugandan Parliament.



KAMPALA, Uganda — Brutal policing is a global crisis, but America’s favorite African strongman, Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president since 1986, has deployed his own security forces to a particularly malign end: assaulting opposition parliamentary lawmakers to crush the democratic challenge he is facing.

I speak from experience. I am a member of Uganda’s Parliament and also a musician, activist and founder of the opposition People Power movement. For the past three years, we have been seeking social, economic and political change with the support of Uganda’s youth — 80 percent of the population — who face dire poverty.

On April 19, my colleague Francis Zaake, a 29-year-old member of Parliament, was arrested and tortured. Previously strapping and healthy, he now walks with a cane from the beatings he received there.

Why torture an elected member of Parliament?
On March 31, the Ugandan government imposed a strict coronavirus lockdown without notice, leaving many citizens unable to work. When some parliamentarians began passing out relief food to constituents, Mr. Museveni threatened to arrest them. In theory, the ban was universal; in practice, politicians from Mr. Museveni’s ruling party continued passing out food. The message was clear: Support the regime or starve.


Mr. Zaake’s crime was delivering food to the hungry while being an opposition member.
Assaulting elected members of Parliament and their supporters is an assault on the very idea of democracy. Ugandans have lived under Mr. Museveni’s tyranny for 34 years. We have had elections, but their legitimacy has been marred by rigging and the killing and torture of opposition supporters.



We stand for democratic rule; depoliticizing the security forces, judiciary and other institutions; peace in our region; and fighting Uganda’s rampant corruption. We maintain that this will help create the conditions for Uganda’s economy to thrive.

We regret to say that we might not have suffered for so long had Washington not chosen to ignore Mr. Museveni’s abuses. He is among the Pentagon’s closest African security allies, with troops in Somalia and guards under U.S. command in Iraq. However, he has also stoked conflict both within Uganda and in neighboring countries, while hoodwinking Washington into trusting him on security matters.


The international community needs to rethink its financial, moral and military assistance to our tormentors in Uganda and stand up for democracy.
Bobi Wine is a musician and a member of the Parliament in Uganda.



We were held for more than a week. I and several others were tortured and couldn’t walk unaided when released. I traveled on crutches to the United States for medical treatment.
We aren’t the only legislators to have suffered at the hands of Uganda’s security forces. In September 2017, opposition lawmakers filibustered to block a parliamentary bill to remove the age limit for the presidency, set by the 1995 Constitution at 75 years. The change would allow Mr. Museveni, who says he was born in 1944, to run in 2021. An Afrobarometer poll in September 2017 suggested that 75 percent of the population opposed lifting the age limit.
On Sept. 19, 2017, when the bill was to be introduced, Mr. Museveni deployed armored vehicles and heavily armed police around Parliament to prevent protests. Our filibuster managed to delay the bill’s introduction for a week, but on Sept. 27 dozens of plainclothes operatives appeared on the floor of the Parliament.
About 30 lawmakers were arrested, including me. During the mayhem, six operatives escorted a parliamentarian, Betty Nambooze, into a room without security cameras. They pressed her against the wall while one of them shoved a knee into her back, severely injuring her spine. She was flown to India for surgery, enabling her to walk again, but was tortured again in June 2018 and now walks with a cane.
Fearful and despondent, we dropped the filibuster campaign, and the age limit on the president was removed in December 2017. The attacks on our People Power movement have continued, and we have lost dozens of activists and supporters to violence on the part of the security forces. Yet support for our movement has increased.
I grew up in poverty and was fortunate to have a successful career as a musician. I soon found myself singing about corruption, poverty and oppression. Music galvanizes people but they can be empowered only through politics, so I decided to run for the Parliament.
Last week, my colleagues and I formed the National Unity Platform, a political party to challenge Mr. Museveni and his party in Uganda’s next election, expected in early 2021.

Image
Credit...John Muchucha/Associated Press
Twice, Uganda’s Supreme Court seemed on the verge of overturning Mr. Museveni’s election. After the 2016 election, Mr. Museveni placed his main challenger, Kizza Besigye, under house arrest so that he couldn’t petition the court within the constitutionally mandated time period.
As support for our People Power movement has grown in recent years, Mr. Museveni has increased the frequency and brutality of attacks on lawmakers.
On Aug. 13, 2018, I was with colleagues in Arua, a town in northern Uganda, after a long day of campaigning. We were there to support an opposition colleague who was running for Parliament in a special election. All of a sudden, Uganda’s Special Forces Command besieged our hotel. They shot and killed my driver, Yasin Kawuma, who was sitting in the passenger seat of my vehicle. The bullets seemed to have been intended for me. Thirty-four of us, including three other lawmakers and the candidate Kassiano Wadri, who eventually won the Arua special election, were arrested.

Credit...Reuters
 
 

Arua Fracas: Museveni says SFC beat up Bobi Wine in ‘a good way’ (Video)

 

 Bebe Cool wonders why Bobi Wine who can’t walk, puts on heavy boots

  Jonah Kirabo

August 22, 2020 at 6:41 am
 
 President Yoweri Museveni has commended the Special Forces Command (SFC) forces for acting professionally when they were ‘provoked’ by Kyadondo East legislator, Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu alias Bobi Wine in Arua back in August 2018.
At least 33 people including lawmakers Bobi Wine, Kassiano Wadri, Francis Zaake and Paul Mwiru were arrested in August 2018 for allegedly throwing stones at the presidential convoy.
Later, it emerged that most of the detainees had been tortured by security agencies during their arrest.
Several opinion leaders, lawyers and human rights activists condemned the torture and asked government to arrest and prosecute individual security officers who were involved.
Two years later, while passing out 4809 Police trainees at Police Training School in Kabalye, Masindi on Friday, Museveni maintained that the SFC officers acted in self defence and beat Bobi Wine ‘in a good way.’
President Museveni said: “The other day there was a fracas in West Nile where our young friend Bobi Wine tried to fight with security people, I think they beat him a bit and then they came to me and said that an MP was beaten, I said okay, let me study how he was beaten.”
“When I studied, I found the man had been beaten properly, in the right way. This was because when the SFC people, who are not police, they are used to do our things actually managed to act properly. I was surprised.” The President said.
President Museveni added that when they went where Bobi Wine was, after causing some problems a day before, Bobi Wine tried to attack them.
“This honourable member boxed them, they also tried to box back until they subdued him and after, they did not beat him again. So I was surprised that these people acted properly, it was self defence and beyond self defence they didn’t beat. It was in order,” Museveni said.
While narrating what exactly happened in August 2018, Bobi Wine said that angry looking SFC soldiers came beating everyone they could see, and claimed that he didn’t try to fight back.
Bobi Wine said: “As soon as they saw me, they charged saying ‘there he is’ in Swahilli. So many bullets were being fired and everyone scampered for safety.”
Bobi Wine’s driver, Yasin Kawuma was shot at and lost his life on the same fateful day but President Museveni didn’t mention a thing about the circumstances surrounding his death.
The SFC are an elite force that guards the President and some of the country’s strategic installations and have increasingly leapt to the fore as a key enforcer of political order.
President Museveni again praised the soldiers for a job well done.

 

 

 

 
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