{UAH} U.S. Turns Blind Eye as Museveni Cripples Democracy [H. Epstein -- The Nation Magazine]
|
10:01 AM |
No comments |
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.
--
Disclaimer:Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
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.
--
Disclaimer:Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment