{UAH} Rwenzori : King Mumbere already at the summit, Museveni still battling with the steep slopes!

It's now the very famous legendary Mountains of the Moon, our magnificent Rwenzoris, that are offering news to the world, and the whole international community is once again shocked by the horrendous images and information from Kasese!

When will Uganda ever have any glimmer of hope for an everlasting peace? This is the question one hears everywhere in Europe where millions of people have seen and been extremely shocked by what is still going on in the Rwenzori region!

Bodies rotting away in the mortuary, on the streets; corpses tied at the back (kandoya), women being stripped naked and paraded around and others being sexually offended on and even mutilated! Old people being persecuted and hundreds of orphans helplessly roaming around, and mass burials taking place,etc... All this being basically the work of political idiocy where greed for power through the gun obliges towards the inhuman. But all this will one day come to an end and the suffering of a desperate people will be but a myth! However, once again, the worst has been done! Condolences to the people of Kasese, condolences to all Ugandans, and a good thought for all those young policemen who have paid with their life for the mistakes done by careless politicians!

This Kasese problem, as scholars on this forum have pointed out, dates from early colonial time and culminated into the worst in the pre-independence years, and is said to be a multiplicity of problems involving land, politics, culture, etc...  And what now surprises any observer is the fact that modern Uganda, with all the notable institutions at hand, can't be mobilized to sit and debate the problem and suggest solutions! Rwenzururu's King Mumbere is seen as a mere scapegoat where others with more powers for effective civic action and multitudes of advisors can't come out with an answer to quell the situation in Kasese! It surprises to learn that the authorities are going to open scores of charges, including murder and high treason, against King Mumbere! So things resulting in a failed effort for solution for a problem that pre-dates Uganda's independence and early colonial time are now to be put on the head of a poor monarch who has always yearned for peace and development of his region in spite of all untold challenges he used to face? The King and his advisers opted for a political line that obliged them to work with a party in Opposition to try and sell their grievances to the rest of the country. And this has been one of the key causes of the ongoing suffering of the people of Kasese, blamed for not having mobilized for ruling NRM! If you don't support NRM do you necessarily need to see your palace vandalized and torched to ashes, your guards killed and hundreds of your subjects wiped out and their property destroyed? What has taken place in Kasese is unfair, inhuman, and must be condemned the world all over! And I thank those world institutions which are now coming out with proposals to have the Kasese incidents probed into and get the culprits punished!

And on the Ugandan side, it's very sincerely gratifying to hear the many very good noises coming forward to give various kinds of proposals aimed at a good solution. Religious leaders have called for an effective comprehensive dialogue, the Katikkiro of Buganda has expressed smpathy with the suffering, political parties have played a good role : FDC with prayer and recollection, etc.., DP thru the formidable voice of President General Hon Mr Norbert Mao has very courageously called on the immediate release of King Mumbere and has promised legal aid to him through a strongly mounted team of DP's legal gurus! Ugandan diaspora all over the entire globe has shown concern and isn't ready to abandon the poor people of Kasese! Our very powerful Ugandans-at-Heart Forum has given very many important updates in addition to original critical exhortations on the situation. And what the Forumists have written has been read with particular interest in many corners of the world!!! Thank you UAH for your  unfailing patriotism!Museveni has been there for three decades and he knowns everything on the situation in Kasese and yet, surprisingly, he can't use his good offices to mobilize for a global national dialogue in order to throw the problem to the full attention of the entire population to seek aid and solution for Kasese or for the entire Rwenzori region. Now they blame the King for everything. Was the King responsible for the deaths of all those hundreds of peopleicluding those who were reportedly found dead before the assault on the palace? Governmenr official position on the events in Kasese can't convince any serious-minded Ugandan! And what surprises is the way in which Museveni in a recent statement on the events seems to criticize ancient DP of which he claims to have been an active member. If that DP was naive it nevertheless helped to bring independence to the country and had it stayed on long we would definitely have seen no such things as the situation in the North, in Kaseses, and elsewhere. The leader of the party at that time was a great national hero who couldn't accept seeing suffering  afflicted to anyone citizen. He is the one who settled the Bugisu-Sebei problem where people had been killing each other for years and years. He was respected by the Rwenzururu who often voted DP Dialogue and fraternal debate were his passion and he won much throught this art. And he died as a martyr for the principles of justice and for the defence of the people! And he continues to remain a great nationalist who will never be forgotten!

NRM and Museveni have been there for 30 years and one woulf feel that such length is more than enough to learn how to front state matters with a sensible approach other than the emotional use of guns. Soldiers who kill fellow citizens like the case has been in Kaseses and elsewhere before, are persons acting outside the law no matter how they are instructed from above! They take the law in their hands and the humble Ugandan citizens will one day be right to take the law in their hands in order to deal with such armed lunacy! Nobody has a right to order the security forces to kill, to destroy  and to loot! That's why in the case of Kasese there is now an urgent call for an international investigation in order to have the guilty ones tried before the ICC and in order also to request all interested parties rethink some of their policies on Uganda! The  international community is tired of always hearing those bad stories from Uganda and is very sympathetic with the population and in the case of Kasese there is a lot of goodwill and sympathy towards the people of the Rwenzori region and King Mumbere himself whom many judge innocent! It's sheer active ill will to accuse him of murder and treason! No case to answer for a King who has been maliciously attacked and has had his palace and all property destroyed and, as if to find him a new accommodation, they have just got to humiliate him with imprisonment! This is unacceptable especially when one notes that there is no sanction proposed against that brutality by the security forces!!

Let there be an effective and sincere dialogue for peace involving all classes of Ugandans and let that be the only feasible occasion to look seriously into the Rwenzururu question! All Ugandans and the international community are now for this objective! The question of always seeing one individual person coming out with his personal opinions and solutions can't work in this case. Kasese needs a real modern debate and a critique for any eventual solution!

There is also the ever ardent wish to look into the question of Uganda's security forces. Why are they so brutal and why do they come down with vengeance, most of the time actuated by low and selfish motives!! Can't they undergo a pure military or police education instead of  getting  them purely politicized? And some observers have described them as easily excitable and nervy.

Once again, condolences to Uganda for all these deaths, and condolences to the people of Kasese for the hundreds of their numbers who have been killed in such a brutal way, and  sympathies for what these Kasese people have gone through and are now terribly experiencing, as a result! Providence  will one day produce a heart of gold and a voice of gold for the people of Kasese and for the entire nation!

G.H.K.

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