A banana seller and a security guard from the Ugandan village of Tagga were cycling on their way home this summer when they had to dismount because the slope became too steep. As they walked uphill with their bicycles, they were attacked from the coffee bushes along the road and beaten on the head so hard that they died. It was the first of at least 26 mysterious murders in Lwengo and Makasa districts. All victims were killed with machetes.
On September 8, police arrested Muhammed Ssegirinya and Allan Ssewanyana, both MPs representing the Platform of National Unity (NUP), the party of popular singer and ex-presidential candidate Bobi Wine. They are charged with “terrorism”, “supporting terrorism” and plotting six of the murders. “Do they now want to tell us that Ugandans are so gullible that they believe the nonsense that these are the masterminds?”, their lawyer reacted angrily. He spoke of a “political persecution” of his clients.
Bobi Wine, the stage name of Robert Kyagulanyi, received 35 percent of the vote in the February presidential election, according to official figures, after an extremely violent campaign period. At least 54 people were killed in clashes between the police and opposition supporters during that period. Because there would be ballot fraud on election day itself, his party contested the result.
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In the two districts where the murders took place, between 66 and 75 percent of voters had voted for the NUP – according to official results. “Many people think that the arrests of Ssegirinya and Ssewanyana are intended to denigrate the opposition and prevent people from ever voting for the NUP again,” said Kato Mukasa, human rights lawyer and president of the Uganda Humanist Association, by telephone from Kampala. He knows the two victims from Tagga. “One was a parent of a student at the school that our organization runs there. They were neighbors of mine. The people in my native region are still afraid to leave their home.”
Police say they have arrested about 20 people. Some of them are said to have identified the two NUP MPs as instigators of the massacre, which is intended to “frighten the population so that they start hating the government”. as one police spokesman put it.
Mukasa attaches little value to the accusation. “We have a history of our authorities falsifying evidence against politicians.” He refers, among other things, to the arrest of Bobi Wine in 2018 for illegal possession of weapons, after which the police the press showed two AK47s and a pistol, allegedly found in Wine’s hotel room, only to drop the charges shortly afterwards. Wines also under house arrest after Election Day, which was canceled by order of the judge, allegedly based on “evidence” that he had incited violence, which was never heard from again.
Sobbing Suspect
President Yoweri Museveni seems to have wanted to do something about his image in the field of human rights after the uproar surrounding the elections. In a speech on television he denounced the police brutality in mid-August. “It’s wrong to beat detainees,” he said him after showing images of a sobbing suspect who stated that the police had beaten him with sticks. “You undermine your own case if the judge discovers that you obtained information through torture. Second, someone who is beaten can give false testimony.”
Activities of non-governmental organizations have been canceled indefinitely
Seeing, then believing, activists reacted to Museveni’s sudden conversion to human rights. The skeptics soon seemed to be right: five days after the speech, 54 non-governmental organizations were were told that their activities had been suspended with immediate effect for an indefinite period of time. According to the NGO Bureau, a government body, they had not complied with certain rules, such as submitting the annual accounts for 2020.
witch hunt
The ban on the NGOs is ‘a witch hunt’ against organizations ‘nearly all of which are committed to raising awareness and educating Ugandans about their rights,’ said Shibolo Awali, director of Triumph, an NGO that deals with ‘controversial’ human rights issues such as the rights of homosexuals.
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The NGO Bureau has been in existence since 2016, as a result of a new, stricter law for NGOs, he says from Kampala. “Under that law, the police can enter your office at any time to check what you are doing. Civil rights organization Chapter Four found this contrary to the right to privacy and to assembly and took it to court.” The organization is one of the best-known NGOs whose work has been shut down.
Ambassadors from EU countries, including the Netherlands, have protested in Kampala against the shutdown of the 54 NGOs. Two of them receive indirect support from the Netherlands, according to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but she would not say which ones “so as not to get them into trouble”. She also does not want to say how Uganda reacted. That would make further discussions “more difficult” and “not contribute to a solution”.
NUP MP Allan Ssewanyana was released on bail on September 23, only to be taken away after a few minutes by plainclothes security agents. There were “new charges” of “treason” and “calls for violence,” police said later. Muhammed Ssegirinya was released on bail on Monday and was immediately arrested again.
Bobi Wine responded immediately in a tweet to refer to Museveni’s speech on human rights. Ssewanyana’s “kidnapping” after his release would prove that Museveni didn’t mean his speech. “We told him it was only a matter of time before he was unmasked.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of October 4, 2021