A majority of Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) members are disillusioned with the rampant spate of abductions, torture, forced and enforced citizen disappearances, among other human rights abuses in Uganda currently, but they only lack the courage to speak out, it has emerged.
Tortured Ugandan writer and lawyer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija (shown with Bobi Wine) fled Uganda in 2022.
According to Philosophy teacher, Cartoonist and Columnist Jim Spire Ssentongo, “Perhaps…surprised that Hon Ofwono Opondo would be the one to stand…against the trend of abduction and disappearance of people [in Uganda].
“However,” Ssentongo said on October 23, “the truth is that many people in NRM are disgusted too—only that they lack the courage to speak out. I randomly meet many of them, but I haven’t talked to a single [one] that privately supports the abductions and torture. It takes a certain degree of inner deadness and lack of foresight to support that cruelty.”
The longest-serving Museveni’s Government and NRM spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, now NRM MP representing Older Persons from Eastern Uganda, is only a handful among the ruling party senior members to come out openly and speak out against human rights abuses in the country. Ofwono Opondo joins Museveni’s long-time comrade-in-arms, minister and NRM MP, Maj-Gen (Rtd) Kahinda Otafiire who has been fearlessly consistent in openly condemning human rights abuses allegedly spearheaded by Museveni’s Chief of Defense Forces son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Gen. Muhoozi—who chairs a political outfit, the Patriotic League of Uganda, in complete contravention of the Constitution and laws manning serving members of the armed forces—just recently demanded an unreserved apology from Otafiire for criticising him on the Floor of Parliament. The apology is yet to come through.
Enters Ofwono Opondo on the Floor of the same Parliament on October 22: “Two things: Is this now the way to apprehend suspects—that they make a decoy, lure you into a police station and then the military come and arrest? Is this the way? I would want the Government Chief Whip to ask the ministers of Internal Affairs who are coming to make a report to make clarification. “Secondly, that lady says that as soon as she was put in a van, which we commonly call the drone, they started hammering her, [gun-]batting her, assaulting her. Mr Speaker, we the NRM, the overwhelming majority in this House; there is a known established procedure of the NRM. Is this the new law of the NRM? I think this House should demand a thorough explanation from the minister of Defence, the Attorney-General, the minister of Internal Affairs…I think Mr Speaker, it is unacceptable for the NRM to preside over impunity and torturing citizens, particularly a young person, moreso a woman is unacceptable…”
The lady, according to Ofwono Opondo, says she actually took a photograph of one of those people before they tried to demand for her to hand over her phone and her pin, which she declined to do. “So, it is possible to actually examine her phone to see, so that we get to the root of this so that people don’t use impunity,” Ofwono Opondo submitted on the Floor of Parliament on October 22 afternoon.
Ofwono Opondo, a ruling NRM MP, asked whether it is now “the new law of the NRM” to lure a suspect to a police station for the military to arrest suspects. He was citing EU award prize winner, activist Praise Aloikin Opoloje’s account that people who said they were from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI); [now renamed Defense Intelligence and Security], took her and beat her in a van about a fortnight ago. Aloikin was then luckily reversed to the Central Police Station in Kampala, produced in Court where she was charged with using a simcard registered in her mother’s name. She was subsequently remanded to prison. Aloikin was granted bail only a few days ago.
“Two weeks ago,” Ofwono Opondo charged in the august House on October 22, “a young woman called Aloikin Praise Opoloje was lured into a police station and subsequently arrested.” Aloikin had just recently criticised Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba. According to Aloikin’s personal account, as soon as she was at the police station, some people emerged identifying themselves as officers from CMI.
Earlier in the morning of October 22 before the Plenary Session in the afternoon, Ofwono Opondo told the local television, NBS Frontline program, thus; “I didn’t know that as NRM, we would reach the level where we fear to say the truth but that’s where we are.”
Talking about fearing to tell the truth, the United States has placed 11 African countries—among which is Uganda—under its highest Level 4 Travel Advisory, warning American citizens against visiting such destinations facing serious security threats ranging from terrorism and kidnapping to armed conflict, civil unrest and inadequate healthcare.
The NRM government in Kampala, however, is intent on deflecting the human rights violations allegations in the country which might be the likely reason the US is slapping travel advisory on the country. The Kampala government keeps drumming the monotonous blame on Ebola yet Kenya which recorded Ebola cases last month is not on the US Travel Advisory, analysts argue. Moreover, Uganda has since been declared Ebola-free.
But the US maintains a travel advisory on Uganda yet the Museveni government has succumbed to all demands from the Donald Trump Administration in Washington: US unwanted ‘criminal’ immigrants have been dumped in Uganda, citizen Michael Katungi extradited to the US to face charges labelled against him by the US Justice system and Uganda to send its troops to Gaza in compliance with Trump’s Board of Peace in Palestine and the Middle East. Ugandan boots were the first-ever to deploy in Somalia on March 11, 2007 in what political watchers saw as a hurried ‘appeasement policy’ to catch the attention of Washington.
Again, Uganda signed a health agreement with Washington; an agreement which allows the US to access health data of Ugandans. Zambia and Zimbabwe flatly rejected signing such an agreement with the US.
“It’s the sort of strange realities we live with in Uganda now: There are five youth MPs in the [august] House, including a National Female Youth MP, but it is the MP for [the] Elderly Persons who had the courage to speak up against the abduction of 27-year-old Aloikin Opoloje. I wonder if the MPs for the youth even saw a problem here or were embarrassed at all. Also wonder if any of the ‘youthful’ MPs wondered why they didn’t speak for the last three weeks, but left this to Ofwono Opondo,” human rights lawyer who works with Agora Center for Research in Kampala, Godwin Toko, decried on October 22.
