{UAH} UGANDANS, OCEN NEKYON AND GWOKTO DESERVE AN EXPLANATION

Friends

 

It is very important that as we hold these discussions we do so in both honesty and seriousness, I have thus decided to take a moment  and expand on the accusations that Ocen Nekyon and Gwokto made this morning regarding The Amin government in 1971.  And I am going to start by quoting the two gentlemen with the statements they made and then I will make a clarification. I am going to start with the first quotation thus :-

 

There was nothing "Bloodless" about that coup and those who are saying so are not serious. I have previously stated that most of the Battalion commanders ‎were on leave with the exception of a couple that included one Colonel Tito Okello, in Masaka. Many of the commanding officers reported back as ordered by the new Head of State, only to be arrested and imprisoned at Makindye Barracks. They were next herded into a single room and dynamited. ‎One of my uncles; Lt. Oboma Ayume, was one of the victims. He was tricked into coming out of hiding by the relatives of his wife who was Madi. He had been assured of his safety if he came out voluntarily. A couple of days later the soldiers were called to a parade in order to witness an event. Prior to the Coup, the Deputy Army Commander was a Brigadier Hussein, who was in charge of leading a counter coup against Idi Amin. Brigadier Hussein was a Kakwa by tribe, which basically blows away the stupid theory that Obote was planning to eliminate West Nilers, that week or there abouts. He had been arrested the previous night while hiding with a certain Lt. Colonel called David  Oyite-Ojok, after they tried to escape from the parliament building and separated. Lt. David Oyite-Ojok survived because those who arrested him had been lukewarm towards the coup and they had liked him. They advised him(Oyite-Ojok) about which roads to avoid because there were being patrolled. This was in spite of the order from Idi Amin, that the one man he really wanted was Oyite-Ojok, and there was a big reward for whoever arrested him. Brigadier Hussein was paraded in front ‎of the troops and made to lie down on his back. A Military Tank was then used to run over him back and forth as a warning to all not to fight the new regime.For some us that is the "Independence" Idi Amin, was delivering.

 

Ocen Nekyon May 05, 2014 11:25 AM

 

Then we have a second quote thus :-

Do you know how many priests, teachers and doctors in Ngetta Village alone around Comboni College where I went disappeared on a near daily basis and had nothing to do with the barracks? Did you ever wake up in the night at a upcountry boring school to go pee only to see silhouettes of armed soldiers stealthily patrolling your school's football field, under classroom verandas and pointing at what you cant see? Oh, probably you didnt bcos only if you attended high school would you have witnessed these. Btween Ngetta District Farm Institute and Ngetta mission alone (a distance of barely 1 km two prominent innocent doctors were yanked out of their houses never to be seen when I went to the nearby school. I dont remember their names now but their kids were my school mates and you can imagine the devastation knowing they could have been dragged out by the same silhouette stealthy soldiers you have often spotted in the nights walking the school compound. One week after a huge ordination ceremony of three local Catholic priests in Ngetta presided over by tens of Bishops, government officials and happy locals, a young priest, Fr Alyela was yanked from the mission never to be seen but even though other priests put up a verbal fight to leave him alone.

 

Gwokto May 05, 2014 10:45 PM

Ugandans we have grown up in very tough times, and we have seen such terrible issues in our families our lives and homes. 1971 was a year where everyone was a virgin to violence, forget those that stand up to preach about 1966 but in 1971 very few Uganda kids let alone adults actually knew that Uganda owned an armed force. Did you know the color of their uniform? Did you know the color of their trucks? Did you know the location of their barrackses? And the answer to all those questions is no because they were held privately. An army truck was moving only if necessary and only at night. But that was not all Uganda, there are kids that were born in military families and they grew up in barrackses seeing them and proudly seeing their parents in those trucks. But if you grew up in Luwero district, no you had no business knowing what an army officer looks like. Those sites were brought to us after 1971. With that very same understanding, I want to agree also that those kids never knew that soldiers are actually trained to be sacrificed.

 

And you can flip that all you want but a soldier is so because he walks into bullets to die so that he stops them from coming to us, and that is a very basic understanding. Where I have a problem with these two gentlemen is their total failure to understand the tyranny of death as it was inflicted to those of us that never agreed to serve in the army, but expected to be protected by the army. My father valued my life and thus refused to join and that value must constitutionary be protected. It is very wrong for you as a son of a soldier to expect the very same protection I own, because my father lost a great deal by not joining sir. And that is what creates the difference between Ogole and Amin for Ogole protected you yet Amin protected us. Iddi Amin protected the civilians yet Col. John Ogole failed.  {And I will come back to the comparison between Amin and Ogole in time}

 

Few days ago in sending condolences to the death of Col. John C. Ogole, a member of UAH stated that he was commanded by Ogole in Katikamu. I am thus going to explain to Nekyon and Gwokto what happened in Katikamu now that Ogole has decided to protect Museveni.  Forget the killings that happened in Katikamu when Ugandans that were not soldiers and had nothing to do with soldiers had all been whipped dead by both UNLA soldiers and NRA soldiers, fast forward to Museveni is soon to be sworn to power, we are talking  in between the Tito Okello peace jokes. We tried to go and survey what we had lost and what we had saved. That survey failed because the Dogs had gone wild. You see we kept dogs in homes as domestic animals that ate food we had cooked, but they had been abandoned for months if not more than a year, and what we found was dogs surviving on a basis of survival for the fittest. As people were running those who managed to pass Ogole and Museveni, they abandoned their Goats, their cows, their chickens, and everything was let loose because now you have no way of saving their lives. Many of the cows were shot by NRA and by UNLF and eaten so were the goats and so were the sheep and chickens. Dogs started by chasing chickens and eating them, then the goats, then the sheep, then it reached on cows. Dogs fade on dead people because Acholis were never cleaning up after their murders. Dead people were left laying on streets. George Okello has just stated that John Ogole instructed all soldiers dead to be returned to the barracks and buried, we needed nothing less than that, but he denied us that right. The mass graves you see in Katikamu were buried by people running from Ogole in the night. As Dogs became the commanders of the region. So we showed up and they never knew who we were for every mobile thing to them was edible.

 

Returning into Luwero required a mass killing of all Dogs that had gone wild due to eating human and animal flesh. I will end this paragraph with a recognition of a Dog that was of my friend, and this Dog's name was called Phoebe, Phoebe was brought up eating good meal daily and she was not brought up to defend her own meal. But Phoebe knew that her owner went to Ssebamala Church of Uganda to pray every Sunday, Phoebe with very weak legs crawled up hill and sat on the steps of the Church of Uganda at Katikamu where she died. The bones of this Dog were buried just on the west side of the church. When Ocen Nekyon and Gwokto stand up to educate us on how they suffered under Iddi Amin, because two or three soldiers were killed by Amin's soldiers they need to realize the danger in that discussion because they can tell that story for they were spared, the Luwero and Katikamu people story is not told for a very single reason, every one that stayed was murdered including their animals and left for foxes to eat. And that is why the death of John C Ogole brings back the entire Luwero depression because this man has spent a whole last thirty firkin years, with his mouth shut and he has told no body what happened in Luwero. John C Ogole has just victimized us twice.

 

Who was Col. John C. Ogole?

 

Colonel John C Ogole was the overall commander of The war in Luwero triangle, this man was involved in every part of fighting NRA and he actually reached a point where he beat them off to the war almost to stop. But here is the problem we have on Ogole. As a government field commander he passed a resolution that no one can move out of Luwero district. He instructed UNLA soldiers in Bombo and those that were in the operation theater, to block off any one from running out. Many UPC members knew that NRA was hunting them down to be killed but they failed to run out of the district for finding you running out Luwero was a criminal offence, and you would be arrested by UNLA. Colonel John C Ogole made it illegal for any headmaster or principle to close his/her school. They patrolled all schools to make sure that they are open. What Ogole tried to do was to paint a false picture to the international community that Luwero was a safe place. But in so doing, he so sacrificed all women and all girls in boarding schools and all people's wives to both UNLA and NRA. You see UNLA would show up at a school and pick as many girls as they so wished and raped as so wished, but when NRM took over those school areas they simply turned all of them into wives. It is important to note as well that many men and so called Kadogos joined NRA for they had nowhere to run yet they were dying or their parents have been murdered by either NRA or UNLA, Museveni took them in  a lie of self-defense. Had Ogole not blocked off Luwero district, many of those Kadogo's would have got a chance to run out way before Museveni showed up. Yoweri Museveni and NRA were not government soldiers so they had no responsibility to protect civilians but John C Ogole did, yet he decided to sacrifice all of them. Among those he sacrificed was my very good friend that was driving the Uganda transport Coporation bus to Nakaseke, this bus had to do two trips a day and it was decided that the Nakaseke road had become very impassable for NRA was showing up everywhere, they wanted the route to be stopped, Ogole refused and instructed the bus to run. And one of those days NRA set up a bomb and among those that died was my friend who was a conductor. Those of us that survived did so because we created our own ways of getting out by by-passing him, using small roads to Luwube Kikyuusa or through Wobulenzi Bamunanika Zirobwe. The entire Luwero was corned off by John C Ogole for if he arrested you it meant you worked for NRA and you would be taken to Bombo barracks. To today I do not know a single person that was ever taken to Bombo and came back. Luwero today has so much confusion from fatherless children the caricature of Bodaboda operators in Kampala, to you name it, much of this was built by Ogole and his policies of caring more about the government than the people. And trust me I can narrate about Kiwumpa Kalule Timiina Kisule Nakaseke Bbowa to you name it.

 

I want us to fast forward and raise the name of Iddi Amin as we do this comparison.

 

The real war that we as Ugandans faced first was the 1979 war, all artilleries and all armies and all tanks were available. The war ran all way from Mutukula to Kampala. It must be noted that in that entire region there was no mass grave in which Ugandans were buried. There were no schools where children were raped. There is no record of a Uganda Army soldier raping women in that region, and most of the people that lived in that sector are alive and dying today, a very reason we have Kateregga in this forum. Do you know why we failed to get people dead? Because Iddi Amin made the protection of the people a priority. At every news read during that war you were all informed  of what is a war zone and what is not a war zone. All of you Mawokota people are being informed that you have three days to vacate all your villages. Today you have two. Today everyone in Mawokota has to leave. You are all informed that effective today, Mawokota is a war zone and if you are in a war zone you will be regarded as an enemy. But what did all this mean to the people? It meant that Uganda government under a direct order of Iddi Amin will evacuate all of you to safety. Every Uganda transport Coporation bus every Uganda army vehicle, every government vehicle to the front line had an Amin instruction to drive these back to safety. They were packed into community centers, they were packed into schools, they were packed into churches, and all red-cross accessible. Uganda hotels was instructed to feed them by cooking food and sending it into those centers and for free. Medicare was available and if you needed to be taken to Mulago the transportation was available. If you had a job your manager was instructed to advance you so that you have funds to run for now we are in a battle. At a time I was working in Uganda Posts and telecoms, and we were authorized to get money from any post office in the country as long as you showed up your PF number. I was one of the last two civilians that left Mpigi Post Office by a tank for we were refused to leave because we were maintaining a communication system for the soldiers in Mpigi, as a last point to the front line. But time arrived and Kampala instructed the army to evacuate us to Kampala for now our death was eminent. They sent us food from Uganda hotels every day and every night for we were the last civilian contact to maintain the communication. That was the Iddi Amin I Knew.

 

Community centers kept on moving people closer to Kampala as the war came closer and many lives were saved. Record must show that the people in the community centers were being encouraged to move into the eastern side of Kampala and find refugee, many ended up in Luwero and many ended up In Bugerere and Busoga but alive. There was no single school that was ever refused to move from the battle ground as John C Ogole did. It is imperative for us to realize that when UNLF took Entebbe and closed on Kampala, Amin lost control and everything went awire, UNLA started to rape people left and center. They started the Western brigade that killed every Moslem in Mbarara Lake Katwe and then the anarchy of West Nile to sum it all up. It is important for you to realize that even Nyerere had a problem allowing Acholis to go to West Nile, it was Tanzanians to start with, people believed them till when Acholis lied their way out and murdered every living thing, from Alurs to Madi to Kakwa to Banubbi it started a hunt down of Moslems now they took every firkin Christens and it was a total chaos.  And that is the very difference between Col John C. Ogole and Iddi Amin. It is very bothersome that today Ogole is defined and in a very public forum as a guarantee soldier of Uganda.

 

Ocen and Gwokto, in as much as I understand what you went through and how terrible it was, this is the real life of a soldier family. But I am glad that Uganda army soldiers showed up and picked exactly who they wanted and killed him yet left you free, some of us grew up running like thieves in our very own country. We had mass graves on our schools yet the schools had to remain open.  Museveni has lived this long because the tyranny The Ogole's inflicted into Luwero must never be seen again. And yes Museveni is a tyrant but people in Kireka Nakawa Bweyogerere Ntinda let alone Luwero the entire district, do you know how many days we slept into forests as Monkeys for fear of Acholi soldiers? Months and that is literary. Cocks were slaughtered for they will crow in the morning. Doors were being broken every  night, there is no single woman that was not raped and in Luwero you will never start a DNA test center for we don't know who fathers whom, so let everyone be where he/she is. That is your father and shut up. We have agreed to live that life for we have no alternative, and the death of Ogole after he sold us to Museveni has simply added salt to the wound. At minimum respect our pain and don't raise what you went through as tyranny. With the death of Col. John C. Ogole when he has decided to protect Museveni due to personal gains, we will have no option but to talk. This writing with time will have follow ups on what actually happened in Luwero.

 

Ugandans, hate is a right, so yes you can hate Iddi Amin all you so want, but let us discuss him very intelligently.

 

EM

On the 49^th Parallel          

 

            Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
           Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
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