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Wednesday 19 August 2020
Bobi Wine: My Torture at the Hands of America’s Favorite African Strongman
Ugandan
police detaining the academic Stella Nyanzi for protesting against the
way that government distributes the relief food and the lockdown
situation to control the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, in May.Credit...Reuters
My Torture at the Hands of America’s Favorite African Strongman
Yoweri
Museveni, the country’s president and the Pentagon’s closest military
ally in Africa, deploys security forces to assault opposition lawmakers.
By Bobi Wine
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.
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.