Besigye says he feared arrest, physical danger

Former presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, currently in the US, has said that he fled Uganda last week because he feared for his life after hearing that Ugandan security agents were planning to arrest him, and harm him thereafter. Besigye said he left his home in Port Bell, Kampala, on Monday 17 August and made his way to the US on Friday 24 August as a result of information that the government planned to arrest him once African heads of state and international dignatories had left the country - following their participation the SMART partnership dialogue from 18-21 August in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Besigye had “absolutely” feared for his life during his flight from Kenya, he added. In an interview with IRIN in the United States on Wednesday, 29 August, Besigye said he hoped to challenge donors’ belief in Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s commitment to democracy, and that he planned to return to Uganda to build a broad coalition of organisations committed to a democratic transformation. While insisting he was loathe to use violence to achieve his political goals, Besigye said the possibility of his doing so would arise “if the government leaves no option open for peaceful and democratic means of changing or addressing leadership issues.” Ugandan presidential spokeswoman Hope Kivengere told IRIN on Thursday that those who committed crimes in Uganda went to court, and that those who had not committed any crime should have no fear of arrest. “Many people leave Uganda for many reasons, so this business of Besigye leaving the country is neither here nor there,” she said. “Many other presidential candidates stood against President Museveni and they are still here [in Uganda]; nobody was forced to flee ... And if we [the government] had wanted to arrest him, why would we not have done so before?” she added. While word of his impending arrest sparked his flight from Uganda, it was merely the culmination of a series of actions by the government to restrict his freedom and harass him since he ran against Museveni in Uganda’s presidential elections in March, according to Besigye. Since that time, he has been subject to travel restrictions by the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI); on 30 June, Besigye said, he was stopped 80 km outside Kampala while making his way to his family in Mbarara, southwestern Uganda - where his wife, Winnie Byanyima, is the Member of Parliament. “Military men surrounded me with guns and tried to force me into a car. I resisted,” Besigye told IRIN. “In the meantime, many people gathered and, in the process, [the security forces] gave up and did not proceed with their arrest. More ominously, all government agencies denied that the incident had taken place, in spite of the fact that hundreds of people witnessed it,” he added. In March, and again in May, government security officer blocked Besigye from leaving Uganda, though he had never been charged with a crime, Besigye said. He had fled Uganda last week because the democratic [and judicial] process had already been undermined by the government putting him under 24-hour surveillance and restricting his movement, he added. In the US, he has been meeting journalists, legislative aides and government officials, telling his story of a Uganda that differs markedly from its image in the US as a bastion of democracy within Africa. “The important presentation I intend to make is that the democratisation process has definitely gone into reverse gear,” he told IRIN. Besigye argues that the National Resistance Movement system - a supposedly ‘no-party system’ in which every adult is a member of the Movement and represented politically by it - is really a one-party system under which Museveni is undermining democracy. In March, Besigye tried to have the presidential election result overturned in court. The Ugandan Supreme Court ruled in July that there had been irregularities but found, in a three-two majority ruling, that they were not such as to have affected the outcome. (Museveni was returned to office with 69.3 percent of the valid vote, compared to 27.8 percent for Besigye and a tiny percentage for four other candidates combined.) Besigye has been encouraged by the response to him from officials in the US so far, he told IRIN. “The impression I am getting is that the administration in Washington is more open today than the previous administration to the problems of democracy in Africa - and in Uganda, in particular,” he said. His goal in Washington was to have donors suspend, or at least question more closely, international aid to Uganda, he told IRIN on Wednesday. More than half the Ugandan government’s budget comes from grants or loans from international donors. Uganda received $358 million in loans from the World Bank last year, more than any other sub-Saharan country except Ethiopia, and the US is one of the biggest shareholders in the Bank. “I’d like the American government to appreciate the situation in Uganda, because Museveni has been extremely deceptive to the international community,” Besigye said. For a long time he made them believe he was a democrat... They need to know that he was just a con man. He is fake.” Besigye said he would be leaving the US, perhaps by the middle of next week, and hinted that he would be visiting other western countries that donate heavily to Uganda. However, he added that he would be returning to Uganda - sooner rather than later - with the aim of building a coalition of “among all the political organisations which have the objective of transforming Uganda into a democratic society.” Presidential spokeswoman Hope Kivengere said Besigye was perfectly entitled to return, and to organise politically, since Uganda was a democracy. “Anyone who wants to organise, to put forward a [political] platform, can go ahead and do so,” she said. Besigye insisted on Wednesday that he was loathe to use violence to achieve his political goals, but he did not rule it out. “I have gone through a process of violent conflict, a violent change of government before, and I am keenly aware of what it costs,” he told IRIN. “At a personal level, at the community level, at the national level, at the regional level - I know what it costs.” “If the government leaves no option open for peaceful and democratic means of changing or addressing leadership issues, then I’m afraid I will not have the option of avoiding the regrettable and disruptive means of using force,” he added.