SV: {UAH} U.S. Turns Blind Eye as Museveni Cripples Democracy [H. Epstein -- The Nation Magazine]

Wod paco Allimadi and UAH folks,

FIRST, let us agree to disagree that Americans being it under Trump and any other leaders from both GOP and, or Democrats including even their so-called Independents, I think, the whole of them work for the interests of their people hence their continuous supports to dictatorships the world over including concealment of genocide.

Let us take a look on what continued to happen in Palestine and other parts of Latin America where American politics do play sway with heavy interests. But, not forgetting even our African countries you would just wonder what do American politicians sing songs about human rights respects?

SECOND, we can continue to remind them of the deplorable political situation in our countries, but I think it would never be of great helps. This means Africans must help themselves by fighting for their democratic rights to the heavy boots of dictatorships from their own necks. Sorry, Americans can never help us.

 

Mzee Ocaya pOcure

 

Den fredag, 20 juli 2018 19:01 skrev Milton Allimadi <mallimadi@gmail.com>:

https://www.thenation.com/article/us-turns-blind-eye-ugandas-assault-democracy/

The US Turns a Blind Eye to Uganda's Assault on Democracy

For decades, dictator Yoweri Museveni has been a stalwart ally of the

US military, while oppressing his own people.

By Helen C. Epstein

An activist opposed to the extension of presidential age limits is

arrested and carried off by police, near Parliament in Kampala, Uganda

on Sept. 21, 2017. (AP Photo / Ronald Kabuubi)

One September evening last year, a visitor stopped by the office of

48-year-old Ugandan parliamentarian Betty Nambooze. The man was a

ruling-party politician. Nambooze belongs to the opposition, but they

were friendly nevertheless. After a few pleasantries, the visitor

informed Nambooze that he had just come from a meeting at which

government operatives discussed plans to physically harm her. Don't

attend Parliament this week, she said he warned her. "They are going

to break your back."

Few Americans know much about Uganda, but it is almost certainly

America's closest military ally in Africa. For years, its army has

served as a proxy force for the US War on Terror in Eastern and

Central Africa. During the 1990s, the Ugandan military, with US

support, fought dirty wars in Sudan, Rwanda, and Congo in order to

ensure Central Africa's estimated $24 trillion in coltan, uranium,

gold, and other mineral riches remained in the West's sphere of

influence. Today, more than 6,000 US-supported Ugandan troops are

battling the Islamist group Al Shabaab in Somalia and thousands more

serve as guards in Iraq. President Donald Trump's Arab allies are now

reportedly negotiating the recruitment of thousands of Ugandans to

join the ghastly quagmire in Yemen.

In exchange for Uganda's military favors, Washington has long turned a

blind eye to grave human-rights abuses committed by its leader Yoweri

Museveni—who has held power for 32 years through brute force, election

rigging, and corruption. But with Museveni's most recent attacks on

opposition figures, the United States is now ignoring one of the most

evil and blatant recent assaults on democracy anywhere in the world.

In February 2016, Museveni was declared winner of Uganda's seventh

presidential election. The poll had been marred, like others, by

police raids on opposition rallies, the arrest of opposition

candidates, the killing of unarmed opposition supporters, and

electoral fraud. At the time, Uganda's Constitution limited the age of

presidential candidates to 75, making Museveni, who claims to be 73,

ineligible to run in the next election, scheduled for 2021. However,

during the summer of 2017, a back-bencher from Museveni's party named

Raphael Magyezi began drafting a bill to remove the age limit from the

Constitution. If passed, it would enable Museveni to rule

indefinitely. Reputable polls found some 80 percent of Ugandans

opposed lifting the age limit, but all Museveni needed was the support

of a two-thirds majority of Uganda's 427 MPs.

Museveni's political machine runs on a war chest of hundreds of

millions of dollars, much of it stolen from the Treasury and

foreign-aid programs. This ensures his party has a comfortable

parliamentary majority, so that if Magyezi's bill were to be voted on,

it would surely pass. Nevertheless, MPs like Nambooze who opposed the

amendment were emboldened by the knowledge that Uganda's people were

behind them and launched a campaign to block it.

Known as Togikwatako, or "Don't touch it!"—a common parental warning

to Ugandan children—the campaign organized demonstrations against the

age-limit amendment around the country. Museveni's forces responded by

shooting student demonstrators and arresting activists passing out

Togikwatako leaflets and MPs making Togikwatako speeches.

On September 19, the day Magyezi's bill was to be introduced, tanks

were deployed around Parliament and police carrying military-grade

weapons closed off surrounding streets to prevent demonstrations. But

as soon as the session was called to order, Togikwatako MPs donned red

headbands—the symbol of their campaign—and began trying to filibuster

the bill by singing Uganda's national anthem over and over while

waving copies of the Constitution. Uganda's formidable Parliamentary

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, in black robes and white-horsehair judicial

wig glared down at them from the dais and closed the session without

introducing Magyezi's bill. Afterward, the Togikwatako MPS danced and

sang in the hallways, punching their fists in the air in triumph.

Nambooze received the "they will break your back" threat from her

colleague the following Monday. Since joining politics in 2000, she'd

been arrested numerous times and even breastfed two of her children in

jail. Though worried, she attended the sitting the next day anyway.

The filibuster stunts resumed under Speaker Kadaga's expressionless

gaze. At one point, a scuffle broke out when Museveni loyalist Ronald

Kibuule brandished a gun at Togikwatako MP Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda,

and, according to Ssemujju, told him to prepare for a bullet in his

nervous system. Again the session ended without the introduction of

Magyezi's bill.

That night, operatives from Museveni's elite special forces snuck into

Parliament, checking the routes in and out of the central chamber and

identifying the locations of security cameras. Speaker Kadaga opened

Parliament the following afternoon by announcing the suspension of 25

mostly Togikwatako MPs, including Nambooze. Kadaga then departed the

chamber as dozens of operatives in business attire streamed in via

Museveni's private entrance and began violently arresting the MPs

Kadaga had named. Images of what looked like MPs throwing chairs,

fencing with microphone stands, pirouetting on tables, and waving the

Ugandan flag like toreadors were broadcast on the Internet and even

evoked merriment on Trevor Noah's The Daily Show.

But off camera, something horrible was happening. While attempting to

assist a fellow MP who had been slugged by an army officer, Nambooze

found herself face to face with about six of the burly intruders. They

led her to a small room without security cameras where two of them

grabbed her from behind and began squeezing her shoulders and arms

together. Then one of them shoved a knee into her back, and Nambooze

felt something break. The pain was so intense, she thought she might

die. Her assailants were dressed like women, but she told a local

reporter that she had her doubts: "I could not see them, because they

held me from behind but the hands were so hairy and I doubt that they

were actually women."

Nambooze was rescued when a female member of the Parliamentary police

force that routinely patrols the building burst in. "Why are you

killing Hon Nambooze?" she recalled the officer shouting. Her

tormentors released her, but she was no longer able to stand unaided

and fell to the ground. In November she was flown to India where

surgeons performed a six-hour operation in which metal implants were

inserted in her spine so she could walk again.

After the raid, attendance at Parliament dwindled and the filibusters

ceased. But Togikwatako demonstrations continued around the country,

and in October, police shot dead three unarmed demonstrators. Several

NGOs that had been supporting community education about the age-limit

amendment were shut down by the police, and explosives were thrown at

the homes of some Togikwatako MPs. The presidential-age-limit

amendment passed on December 20, 2017.

Early in the New Year, Nambooze's health began deteriorating, and by

spring the pain had become unbearable. She arranged to travel to India

to consult her surgeon, planning to fly out on June 15. But on June 8,

masked men on motorcycles gunned down Ibrahim Abiriga, a ruling-party

MP whom Nambooze had once teased for always wearing yellow—signifying

his loyalty to Museveni. Such drive-by motorcycle murders have become

increasingly frequent in Uganda; a police commander, a senior

prosecutor, several Muslim sheiks, and many others have been killed in

this way in recent years. While Abiriga's killers are not known, his

constituents rioted before his burial, shouting, "We don't want

yellow!" and blamed the government for his death.

In a Facebook message of condolence to Abiriga's family, Nambooze

wrote, "Uganda will be better not through elimination of those we

don't agree with, but because of our effort to put up systems that

will work for us all irrespective of our political beliefs. Every life

must be respected and every murder must be condemned." Her message

also lamented that Abiriga had allowed himself to become a "loud

speaker" for Museveni and his henchmen—"who have chosen to love power

more than the future of our Uganda"—a sentiment shared by thousands of

Ugandans on Twitter.

Three days later, Nambooze was arrested on charges of "offensive

communication," in connection with the Facebook post. She paid bail

and was released, but during a budget speech the next day, Museveni

announced that bail for murder suspects would be scrapped. Nambooze

was immediately rearrested, and for two days she lay in a bare jail

cell on a wooden bench, unable to sit up or stand. She was then taken

to a hospital, but on the way a police vehicle rammed into the

ambulance, further damaging her spine and severely injuring her knee.

While it's impossible to prove, Nambooze suspects the collision was

deliberate and intended to further physically traumatize her. Doctors

later determined that one of the metal screws implanted in her back

had been dislodged and was pressing on a major nerve. Demonstrations

broke out around the country, and she was finally released on bond and

flown to India for another round of surgery on July 4.

In recent years, Uganda's security forces have manipulated elections,

tortured nonviolent political activists, and shot dead roughly 100

unarmed people—including 14 children in a traditional palace in

western Uganda. Government security forces have also thrown countless

peasants off their land to make way for politically connected

investors such as Total, which is constructing an oil pipeline, and

General Electric, which is building a refinery in western Uganda

As Uganda's largest foreign-aid donor—with over $500 million in grants

per year, plus an unknown amount of classified military aid—the US

government has the leverage to rein Museveni in. Much of our aid pays

for medical and other humanitarian projects, which should continue,

but US tax dollars also flow through the World Bank directly into

Uganda's treasury, where much of it is looted to fund Museveni's

repression.

Suspending aid to Museveni might also help quell tensions in Uganda's

war-torn neighborhood. For far too long, gullible US national-security

officials have relied on Museveni to interpret Central Africa's

complex regional conflicts, including the wars in South Sudan and

Congo, even as Museveni himself has exacerbated those conflicts by

arming one side or the other, while pretending to be a peacemaker.

Uganda-backed rebel groups now appear to be emerging in Burundi and

Congo, and Uganda may soon be embroiled in a new war—this time with

Rwanda.

State Department insiders have told me that if we didn't support

Museveni, China would. China's interests in Africa, however, are

primarily economic, not military, and war—Museveni's specialty—is

generally bad for business. In any case, the United States has

historically supplied far more weapons to African dictators than China

has. And even if we did pull out and the Chinese propped up Museveni

instead, at least our tax dollars wouldn't be funding his oppression

and mayhem.

Cynical Ugandans have taken to calling Museveni the Nyampala—after the

brutal headmen who did the dirty work of conquest and subjugation

during colonial rule, while British administrators looked the other

way. The most recent US State Department annual human-rights report on

Uganda mentions neither the Parliament raid, nor Nambooze's injuries.

In a statement days after Museveni's troops raided Parliament, US

Ambassador to Uganda Deborah Malac expressed concern about the "rough

treatment" of some legislators and urged "both sides to refrain from

violence," even though all the violence had been committed by the

government. In early June, Malac toured a Ugandan army base, where she

inspected Washington's latest $270 million donation of heavy military

equipment. She's seen in a newspaper photo gazing through dark glasses

at a tank that looks just like the ones deployed in front of

Parliament while Nambooze was being tortured.

Helen C. Epstein teaches at Bard College and is the author of Another

Fine Mess: America, Uganda and the War on Terror.

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