NOTES ON CONCEALMENT OF GENOCIDES IN UGANDA – BY APOLLO MILTON OBOTE: APRIL 1990 -Part II

Dr. Apollo Milton Obote who died in 2005

 

Portrait of Dr. Apollo Milton Obote in his primetime; died on October 10, 2005 from a South African hospital. He was deposed twice.

 

Considering that the population of Kumi (1979 census) was, in round figures 350,000, the number of the entire population of the District which has not (1990) been herded in camps is extremely ominous. The number being given is 150,000 that certainly cannot be the entire population of Kumi. The missing 200,000 and more appear to be of no interest or concern to those who have created walls to protect Museveni and conceal his genocide.

 

GULU=UGANDA: Museveni has promulgated a law which prohibits not only the pointing out of the shortcomings of or crimes committed by the NRA but also the publication, in whatever form, of the identity or existence of any NRA regiment in any particular area. To dare to point out any shortcoming or crimes of the NRA is to “criticize the NRA” and that in itself a serious and grater crime than, say, if the NRA had buried people alive or herded them in houses which genocidal practices are quite common in the so=called war zones.

The walls of protection which the international media and human rights organizations have erected to protect the regime are such that Museveni, like the mystical James Bond, is hereby licensed to kill and do whatever he likes with the lives of citizens of Uganda.

Chapter three of the Constitution of Uganda has provisions for the “Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Individual”. Although he has not suspended this Chapter, Museveni rules as if the provisions of the chapter do not exist and his regime and army have no obligations whatsoever to observe or ayttempt to observe those provisions. War of aggression is Museveni’s chosen method of gross violations of human rights.

Under cover of war which he himself instigated, the NRA has massacred Ugandans in a mega scale. Under cover of wars, political activities have been banned and comments of the deeds of the NRA are not permitted. In an interview with the BBC in July 1989, Museveni said= “unfortunately for the BBC the war has ended, so you will not have much to report –it is ended“. (Focus on Africa=BBC Magazine 1989. Yet in the month of February, this year, his own Propaganda Newspaper, New Vision, edited by his friend and accomplice William Pike, was reporting the forceful uprooting of 80,000 people from their homes in Kasese District in the far West to concentration camps in order to leave the villages free of artillery bombardment and strafing and thereby destroy homes and foodstuff allegedly to deny succor to rebels.

In March 1990, Museveni moved physically to Kumi District in the East and remained there for 18 days where he took command of his army against “rebels”. The war, which according to him, had ended was being prosecuted by him, some nine months later, with the greatest brutalities. The entire population of Kumi or whatever number remained from previous massacres, have now been forced into concentration camps and Museveni is personally commanding his army in the destruction of homes and property.

Considering that the population of Kumi (1979 census) was, in round figures 350,000, the number of the entire population of the District which has not (1990) been herded in camps is extremely ominous. The number being given is 150,000 that certainly cannot be the entire population of Kumi. The missing 200,000 and more appear to be of no interest or concern to those who have created walls to protect Museveni and conceal his genocide.

Kumi is the District where on several occasions, the NRA rounded young men and had them burnt, gassed or starved to death in Railway wagons. The latest such deed was in July 1989. Museveni and his army have been engaged in the orgies of killings in this District like others im the North and East since 1986. Kumi like its Northern neighbors of Soroti and Lira was a cattle area. This time as people went to concentration camps, there was no cattle at all in the villages, the animals in Kumi are to be found in the NRA barracks, which is also the case in the Districts of Soroti, Lira, Apac, Kitgum and Gulu.

The fiendishly cruel massacres in the so called war zones continue unquestionably, despite propaganda to the contrary, to be the main characteristic of Museveni’s rule. These massacres and the expanding wars are not freely discussed in any forum in Uganda. During the second UPC administration, the leaders and members of the Democratic Party (DP), for instance, had the freedom and assessed and by various means followed the course of the Luwero war, assessed the situation and expressed publicly and in Parliament their findings and views.

In the case of Museveni’s wars in the North and East and now in Kasese in the West, the DP leaders have been totally mute. Their apparent and ostensible excuse is that political activities are banned but the Executive Council of the DP, despite the ban, continues to meet from time to time and issue statements. In every such statement, nothing was said about the massacres and each statement has always unfailingly included praises of Museveni’s rule. The only and ever constant complaint which the PDA leaders lodge is that Museveni has not permitted their Party to govern this country. Leading members of the DP including the President of the Party are in Museveni’s Cabinet. A section of the Executive Council of the DP has been campaigning for the members of DP members to resign from Museveni’s regime, but the campaign is not aganit Museveni’s obsession with wars, massacres and destruction. The campaign is against Museveni’s unwillingness to surrender power to the DP.

The ban on political activities applies only to DPC. The definite political target of Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) and its armed core the NRA is the “Removal of UPC/Obote’s dictatorship by force of arms”. The document was issued in 1987. Having observed the DP leaders at close quarters throughout 1986 as members of his Cabinet, I have confirmed that the NRM/NRA and the DP had one common target: the destruction of the UPC, not by ballot but by force.

Having found that the DP was a toothless dog, Museveni ordered the production of Appendix One of 1987. The destruction of the DP is in Paragraph 3:3 of that document but even that fact has not diminished the attachment of the DP leaders to Meseveni’s regime.

The DP leaders have often made it known that before the DP members accepted to serve in Museveni’s militarist regime, they had held discussions with Museveni in early 1986 and agreed to the DP and the NRM/NRA being the kernel in a “broad-based government”. The UPC leaders never had any such discussion with Museveni. The few members of the UPC who are in Museveni’s regime are voluntarists to whom Party principles are of less importance than their being left alone to seize any opportunity to better their lot.

The UPC has left them alone and this is the first public criticism of their joining the NRM/NRA and the DP in the heinous conspiracy to project Uganda as peaceful when thousands and thousands been and continue to be slaughtered by the NRA.

…..To be continued next week…..

   

 

 

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