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By Alfred Wasike
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has ordered the Police to arrest politicians threatening violence as Uganda transits towards change of political systems.




Museveni also urged the army, the Police, Prisons and other armed forces to be neutral during the July 28 referendum but remain “partisan against crime like violence and other anarchic elements who are bent on destroying our achievements so far.”

Addressing senior Police officers on “Crime Management & Surveillance” in Kampala yesterday, Museveni directed, “Lock them up. That language they are using is not good for attracting investment. Those threats worry people for nothing.”

Others present were the Director of Public Prosecutions, Richard Buteera, the Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Edward Katumba Wamala and CID Director Elizabeth Kuteesa (right).

“There is no trouble in the country. The politics of Uganda is stable. I keep hearing some of these confused politicians threatening that there is a crisis. All Uganda’s problems were addressed in the 1995 Constitution,” he said.

“That is just greed. They tell me that I have not prepared a successor. But the Constitution takes care of that. While we wanted to kill off sectarianism, we championed for individual merit. We later took the initiative to open up so that those who want can leave the NRM and find new political homes. Now we are going for the referendum to let our people decide,” he said.

Museveni urged the police to “read the Constitution. It will help you to be firm in dealing with those anarchists. We have now built up a stable system. Ensure that their disruptive acts or talks stop. Discipline them. We can’t have this indiscipline any more. Be on the side of the Constitution.”

HUSSEIN BOGERE, KABONA ESIARA, AL MAHDI SENKABIRWA
KAMPALA
Riot police yesterday fired tear gas and water canons to disperse hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the move to lift presidential term limits.

The demonstration was organised by the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). It also included members of the Democratic Party, Uganda People’s Congress, JEEMA, The Free Movement and the Conservative Party.

Police deployed heavily at all the spots where the demonstrators were expected to gather or pass.

Work along Kampala Road and Parliament Avenue was interrupted for the entire morning as police battled the demonstrators.

The demonstration was meant to coincide with the first vote in Parliament on the proposal to remove term limits, a move that is widely believed will pave the way for President Yoweri Museveni to stand for re-election in 2006.
Mr Museveni’s last constitutional term expires next year.

The demonstration was planned to start from the Constitution Square at 10:00 pm.
However, police deployed more than 20 officials at the venue who confiscated the demonstrators’ placards and arrested two men from the Uganda Freedom Party (UFP).

Police claimed that the organisers of the demonstration had not informed them in advance. “The order is immediate; there is no demonstration, they should go away,” a police officer, who declined to be named, told Daily Monitor as the demonstrators were dispersed.
Kampala Regional Police Commander, Mr Oyo Nyeko, defended the police action.

“The opposition wrote to the Inspector General of Police but he wrote back calling off the demonstration,” Oyo told journalists at his office. “Parliament has to be informed 48 hours while the police have to be informed 72 hours before the demonstration can take place,” he added.

The demonstrators shouted anti-third term slogans and carried several placards denouncing the no-term limits proponents. Some of them read, “253 MPs cannot decide for 24 million Ugandans. Please say no to third term;” “MPs, don’t murder our constitution, yours peasants;” “US and the donor community, come and save us;” “Pearl of Africa is Pearl of Mafia;” and “What shall we tell the children in the north born in camps?”

Realising that they had been outnumbered, the demonstrators, mostly male youths, retreated to Crest House along Station Road singing anti-third term songs.

From there the procession comprising boda boda riders and seven mini buses moved along Nkrumah Road, to Owino, Ben Kiwanuka Street, past CPS, Speke Road before joining Kampala Road.

Battle begins
What had progressed as a peaceful march suddenly became violent when police deployed five pick-up truckloads of riot police and a spray truck at the junction of Kampala Road and Parliament Avenue. The demonstrators now numbering over 100 were sprayed with peppered water. A pick-up truck carrying some of the demonstrators was abandoned in the main road.

But the protestors did not take the punishment lying down. They threw stones at the police.
The crowd soon melted, only to re-emerge in front of Parliament.

But the police were there too. One parked car’s windshield was left shattered after a police rubber bullet blasted through it. Workers at Stanbic Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Nile Bank and other nearby offices were seen inhaling through their handkerchiefs as the area around Parliament Avenue was filled with tear gas.
The scuffle also attracted several MPs from Parliament where business too came to a brief halt.

As time went by, the crowd grew smaller and eventually disappeared by 2:00 pm.
Conspicuously, apart from the FDC’s Beti Kamya and James Musinguzi, there were no other opposition leaders in sight.

Reposted from Monitor Media

BBC:




Mark Doyle follows in the footsteps of revolutionary Che Guevara in Uvira, in the south-east of the country.
Almost 40 years ago, the mountains towering above this lakeside town in South Kivu province were the scene of some of the opening shots in DR Congo's post-colonial wars.

In 1965, with the world on a tense Cold War footing, the Latin American revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara came here to try to spark a left-wing revolution.
Che aimed to pit himself against what he called the "Yankee Imperialists" whom he saw as backing compliant pro-western candidates for power in DR Congo.

Kabila encounter

Among Che's would-be Congolese allies was the then 26-year-old Laurent Kabila, who he met in the Fizi Baraka mountains, now soaring up above me from the Ruzizi River Plain which empties into Lake Tanganyika at the town of Uvira.

Laurent Kabila did eventually come to power, in 1997. But the revolution he headed was far from left-wing.
He ousted the ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko after forming a tactical alliance with neighbouring Rwanda.

Rwanda wanted Mobutu deposed because he had hosted the defeated Hutu army which had orchestrated the genocide of Tutsis and other government opponents in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Che diaries

But Rwanda lived to regret its choice of Kabila as an ally in the 1996 invasion of DR Congo.

He turned against them after coming to power in 1997, a switch which rekindled the war in DR Congo as Rwanda attacked again - not with Kabila this time, but against him.

Che's recently published personal diaries make it clear that he was unimpressed by Kabila.

Perhaps if the Rwandans and their American advisers had had better intelligence from the Cold War period, they would not have made such a costly mistake.

Unmitigated disaster

Che Guevara's seven-month stay in the Fizi Baraka mountains was, as he admits himself, an "unmitigated disaster".

The mercenary Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare, who had been contracted by the American-influenced government in Kinshasa, squeezed Che's small Cuban force into an ever smaller area until he had to escape back across Lake Tanganyika into the then-friendly territory of revolutionary Tanzania.
Today, this region is no less pivotal to the war, and potentially the peace process, in the DR Congo.

I drove, with a military escort of UN soldiers from Uruguay, up the Ruzizi River plain from the town of Uvira to the village of Kamanyola which is on the border with Rwanda.

Rebel complaints

Along just 50km of road I encountered such a variety of armed groups that I began to think of the Ruzizi Plains as the theatre of a wider Congolese war, but in miniature.

The first roadblock (ostensibly to denote territory but also to levy illegal taxes) was near the village of Kiliba.

The armed men there were polite to their surprise BBC guest, but uninformative.

They belonged to the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).

Originally backed by Rwanda, the rebel RCD controlled Uvira until June when they were ousted by forces loyal to the government.

A young RCD major in uniform broke off from a meeting of officers to complain to me about his conditions in the bush.

Protected warriors

The RCD is now a major component of the coalition transitional government in Kinshasa - although it is regularly accused of still taking orders from Rwanda.

A few more kilometres up the road, past the village of Sange, was another checkpoint.

This was ostensibly manned by the pro-Congolese government militia known as the Mai Mai after the water they douse themselves with to create a magical, bullet-proof shield.

A young man - who said he was 25 but looked no more than 17 - said he was the commander of the post.

A well-informed source in the area told me that this checkpoint was in fact shared between the Mai Mai and anti-Rwandan government rebels that have a base in DR Congo in the hills above the Ruzizi Plain.

"They share the loot", said the source, who asked not to be named.

There were numerous other checkpoints - at least a dozen in total - but many of these were quickly dismantled as the men with guns saw the small Uruguayan army convoy approach.

It would have been very different if we had been ordinary Congolese civilians.

Sane comment

Along the road, I came across a village which had been attacked by one of the groups because they were perceived to support another.

The villagers were clearly terrified, hungry and desperate.
My last stop was the village of Kamanyola, on the border with Rwanda.

Tired now of men with guns, I was relieved to do something ordinary.

I bought some tomatoes and pineapples for a snack and visited a school.

A teacher there said one of the sanest things I had heard all day: "The situation here is very bad", he explained, "because we fear war at any moment."

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