{UAH} HISTORY: ARMY OUSTS UGANDA PRESIDENT.

Army Ousts Uganda's President

July 28, 1985|CHARLES T. POWERS | Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times.

A member of the Langi tribe from northern Uganda, Obote, 60, has long been a power in Uganda politics, serving as prime minister from 1962 to 1966, then as president until his ouster in 1971.
Though widely respected as a black African patriarch, he was not popular at home. A would-be assassin once fired a bullet through his jaw. Critics complained he was high-handed. In January, 1971, when Amin, the man he appointed to head his army, took over the country as Obote was attending a Singapore conference, crowds danced in the streets.
Amin was ousted in 1979 by an invasion of Tanzanian and Ugandan opposition forces, spurred in large part by the loyalty to Obote of Tanzanian President Julius K. Nyerere, Obote's host in exile.
After the brief interim presidencies of Yusufu Lule and Godfrey Binaisa, Obote returned from Tanzania and led his party, the Uganda People's Congress, in the 1980 elections, which were characterized by rigging, human rights violations, murder, and the tribal strife that has gripped Uganda for generations.
The Baganda tribe--whose monarch, Sir Edward Mutesa II, known as "King Freddie," was banished by Obote in the 1960s--voted as a bloc for the opposition Democratic Party. Charges of election irregularities were widespread.
Rebel leader Museveni, who had run for the presidency, took to the bush with a band of Baganda insurgents. In the last 4 1/2 years, these rebels have mounted scores of successful attacks on police outposts and military installations.
The government's campaign against the rebels, never very effective, turned largely against the rural civilian population, who were assumed to be supporting the insurgents. The result was more nightmarish repression of Uganda's nearly 15 million people.
Journalists, diplomats and workers for international relief organizations in the country reported that thousands of civilians were killed. In the Luwero Triangle alone, an area where the government army was most active, U.S. sources and relief agency representatives last year estimated that 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed, including women and children.
A year ago, the U.S. government broke what amounted to a long official silence on the human rights situation in Uganda, when Elliott Abrams, then the assistant secretary of state for human rights, described conditions in Uganda as "horrendous."
Reports of murder and torture in Ugandan prisons, and of soldiers running on killing rampages against unarmed civilians, continued without interruption.
In May, a man who identified himself as a former Ugandan secret policeman said he had killed 350 people and tortured others on orders from the government before fleeing to exile in England.
On June 19, Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, released a report detailing torture in Ugandan prisons. The report included findings by two physicians who had examined former prisoners and eyewitness accounts of civilians being beaten or burned to death. The former prisoners described regular beatings with hammers, rifle butts, iron bars and pieces of wood with protruding nails.
Rape and sexual abuse were described as frequent in Ugandan prisons. Thousands of Ugandans, the report said, have simply disappeared.
Through all of this, Obote seemed lugubrious and taciturn. Persistent reports in the diplomatic community spoke of his heavy drinking, his growing isolation, his constant fear for his safety. He moved around the capital in a curtained limousine with a caravan of soldiers as guards.
In the meantime, the country's poor economic state sagged even further. With help from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and foreign aid programs from friendly Western governments, the country seemed for a time to be making a comeback. But the security problem--and then the human rights situation-- deteriorated rapidly, and confidence in the regime's ability to survive steadily eroded.
The tribal conflicts in Uganda are deeply entrenched and may not be easily overcome in the aftermath of Obote's rule. The tribal schisms in the army were exacerbated when Obote promoted one of his own Langi tribesman to the position of chief of staff, thereby alienating Acholi tribesmen in the army, who make up almost the entire military.

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