Bobi Wine and Barbie. Photo: Facebook.
In a phone interview this morning with Black Star News and other media, Bobi Wine and his wife Barbie told journalists that their lives are in danger and that the soldiers who have surrounded their home have blocked them from leaving and that they have run out of food.
Bobi Wine, whose given name is Robert Kyagulanyi, said he won the Jan. 14 Presidential election “by a very strong margin.” He said the numbers announced by the Election Commission declaring Gen. Yoweri Museveni as the winner didn’t reflect the true data from official declaration forms from the more than 34,000 polling stations around the country.
He called for an international forensic investigation sanctioned by the United Nations which he says would prove that he won the presidential election. He said there was precedent for such intervention, including the case of Haiti. Going forward, Bobi Wine said, “We are putting all legal, all non-violent, and all constitutional options on the table, and that includes peaceful and legal protests.”
Bobi Wine said he and his team have video documentation showing soldiers stuffing ballot boxes, chasing voters away from polling stations, handing pre-checked ballots to people, and also instructing voters at gunpoint on who to vote for. In some cases, people were allowed only to vote for candidates in the Parliamentary race, and that the soldiers themselves voted for president on behalf of the voters.
He said many of his closest aides are on the run or under arrest. “We demand for the immediate release of all political prisoners,” he said. “We also demand for my immediate release—for me and my wife to be released from house arrest, because we have not been charged with any crime.”
“Our life is in danger,” Bobi Wine said.
Bobi Wine referred to Gen. Museveni as Uganda’s “former president,” and called on the United States to impose Magnitsky sanctions against human rights abusers, including Museveni, and to consider a halt to military aid.
“We know that Uganda is a very important security ally, especially in the fight against global terror, but the people of Uganda don’t want the United States to come off as sponsoring the terror that is still being inflicted on the people of Uganda,” Bobi Wine said.
Under the Magnitsky Act, the U.S. government can sanction those it sees as human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.
“We request upon the Unites States to stand up to Museveni’s blackmail, especially on Somalia,” he said. Uganda has deployed thousands of soldiers in Somalia, which the U.S. fear could fall to al-shabab militias, which Washington says is allied with al-Qaeda. As a result Museveni enjoys a blank check when it comes to human rights abuses in Uganda.
The U.S. currently supports Uganda with about $1 billion annually in taxpayers’ money.
Bobi Wine said his senior party members and poll watchers with declaration forms showing the accurate results of the elections were being pursued by security forces, and that killings were continuing around the country. He demanded for the restoration of Internet connection so his team could provide the evidence of the election fraud.
The couple say they have literally run out of food, and Barbie Wine, who is the only other person in the home with her husband, said when she tried to get food from their garden on the compound she was “manhandled” and “pushed” by male soldiers.
She said she cried out for help to female soldiers who were also on the compound to come to her assistance, but that they only stared and took no action. She said the oppressive conditions are contributing to depression and that sometimes she and her husband just sit in silence across from each other. Barbie said they even ran out of electricity since they aren’t allowed to leave the compound to buy tokens and that they would have been in total darkness were it not for solar energy.
The couple’s phone connections have been cut, as well as their satellite tv services. Barbie Wine said when her service was briefly restored, she later realized it had been a “trap” to let the regime monitor the people calling. She said a polling agent who called her was later arrested.
She said a helicopter flies over their home every half hour and that they also saw a drone hovering over.
There are reportedly 500 soldiers surrounding the home and 10 armored vehicles.
(More to come)
