Danniel Nsugba, a 36-year-old electrician and father of five, was rushing home from work Monday with his friend and brother, trying, they say, to avoid violence in the lead-up to Uganda’s February 18 presidential election. But instead of dodging a riot, he stumbled into the firing line when scrambling away from tear gas. He was shot by a policeman with a pistol, according to four eyewitnesses.
Ugandan police in the capital city of Kampala fired weapons and tear gas Monday at supporters of opposition presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, who is running in the upcoming election against President Yoweri Museveni, a former rebel leader and ally of the U.S. who has been president for the past 30 years. Besigye supporters threw rocks, burned furniture and set up roadblocks before the red berets, a senior military police force, stormed through the streets with AK-47s and armored police vehicles.
Ronny Balla, a security guard at a youth hostel near where the shooting took place, said he tried to close the doors, but people escaping the tear gas and shooting pushed their way in. “He was running to enter to save his life,” Balla told Newsweek in an interview the following day, speaking of Nsugba. He says he watched as Nsugba held his neck and stumbled into the corridor, collapsed on the floor and bled to death. Grisly photographs of his blood-covered face and body appeared on the front pages of Ugandan newspapers Tuesday and quickly spread across social media.
The shooting occurred after Besigye was stopped from campaigning on Monday, a few hours after he was briefly detained at another campaign stop earlier in the morning. Thousands of motorcyclists and supporters honking their horns incessantly and flashing two-fingered victory signs were following Besigye through Kampala, choking the city’s streets. Besigye was stopped on his way to a rally at Makerere University, and his car was surrounded by riot police. The police said he wasn’t following an agreed upon route, which Besigye denies.“I have absolutely no idea why I was arrested, no reason was explained to me,” Besigye told Newsweek in an interview in his white four-wheel drive parked outside of his home. “I have said right from the word go that this couldn’t be anything near a free and fair election.”
Monday’s drama is a worrying indication of what may come in the days before and after Thursday’s tense election, which puts Museveni against two challengers, both former allies of the president. Besigye, Museveni’s former personal physician, leads the main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, and has run against Museveni three times since 2001.
Amama Mbabazi, who has spent 20 years in government, including a stint as prime minister from 2011 to 2014, is running as an independent.“We have deployed rapid-response reaction teams because we are expecting a lot of violence,” said Irene Nakasiita, a spokeswoman for the Uganda Red Cross Society, which transported patients to Mulago Hospital after Monday’s clashes. She said 11 people were wounded and one killed. The opposition said at least 19 people were wounded, including many with gunshot wounds. However, Mulago Hospital’s public relations officer denied that any casualties from the rallies were being treated there.
“Museveni will win, he knows all of the tricks,” says Moses Muhumza, 30, a supporter of Mbabazi who, like most Ugandans, has never known another president. (More than 48 percent of Ugandans are under 15.)
In recent weeks, government spokesman Ofwono Opondo has warned of firm action against the opposition if it acts “unlawfully.” At a rally, Justine Lumumba, secretary-general of Museveni’s party, the National Resistance Movement, said, “ Don’t send your children to bring chaos in Kampala and cause confusion during elections, disrupt peace in the country. Government will handle you…. You will be shot.”
Opondo also warned foreign observer missions against interfering in Uganda’s political affairs. “We think they are trying to meddle and cause regime change, whether the Ugandans want it or not,” he said in an interview with foreign journalists.
On Tuesday, the final day of campaigning, Museveni flew to Kampala’s airfield in a yellow helicopter emblazoned with his face. Around 10,000 people gathered for a carefully stage-managed rally, waving yellow flags and dressed in a uniform of yellow shirts, the color of Museveni’s National Resistance Movement party, as a drone shooting video footage flew overhead.
A Ugandan evangelical pastor cursed those who sought to destabilize the country and prayed for Museveni’s victory. “You will take angels and put them at every polling station so that there will be no chaos and no trouble, in Jesus’s name,” shouted Joseph Sserwadda. “We refuse the spirit that worked in Tunisia and Libya, we refuse the spirit in Egypt and Syria. We declare that the peace that we enjoy today will be continued without any hindrance.”
Source: [NewsWeek]
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