UPC political challenge meets with violence

The opposition Ugandan People's Congress (UPC) party has vowed to press ahead with plans to publicly challenge a government ban on political rallies, despite Saturday's aborted effort in the capital, Kampala, in which a student was killed and four others were injured. A trainee journalist was shot dead and several people were injured in Kampala when police opened fire outside the UPC offices to disperse people gathering for the planned political rally, AFP news agency reported on Sunday, 13 January. Dr James Rwanyarare, the chairman of the party's Presidential Policy Commission (PPC), condemned the killing of the student, but said the party would persevere with its "war against terrorism and dictatorship", and that it planned to hold more seminars and public rallies, the independent Monitor newspaper reported in Uganda on Monday. "The campaign we have started of involving the public in the fight against terrorism will continue," the Monitor quoted him as saying. Rwanyarare was arrested after the violence on Saturday, together with 20 other UPC activists, but all were later released on police bond, the report stated. Police in Kampala had outlawed the planned UPC rally and warned the public against going to the proposed venue - Constitutional Square, the government-owned The New Vision newspaper reported on Saturday. There was a heavy deployment of police in Kampala on Saturday to prevent the rally, and Uganda House, where the UPC offices are based, was sealed off, Radio Uganda reported. The Ugandan police chief, Maj-Gen Katumba Wamala, has ordered an inquiry into the circumstances that led to the shooting of the trainee journalist, as well as the arrest of the police officer in charge of the operation, according to The New Vision. "I greatly condemn this act," it quoted Wamala as saying. "The police must take responsibility for whatever has taken place. They shouldn't have carried live ammunition in the circumstances." Dr Adonia Tiberwondwa, a member of the UPC's PPC, said the "brutal response" by the police was "a reflection to the whole world that Uganda is under a police state", the Monitor reported. The police action had also strengthened the UPC's resolve to fight for democracy, it added. "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable," the paper quoted Norbert Mao, MP for Gulu Municipality in northern Uganda, as saying. The government has blamed Saturday's violence on the UPC, which, it said, had defied the law by pressing ahead with its plans to hold an illegal rally. John Nagenda, senior adviser to President Yoweri Museveni, stated in an article in The New Vision on Monday that Article 269 of the Ugandan constitution specifically prohibited public rallies by political organisations or parties, or their representatives, until such time as parliament made new laws legislating for them. "UPC was categorically reminded of this. They chose to ignore it. Were they hoping for blood? In the event, they got it," he added in the column. Political parties are outlawed under Uganda's "Movement" or "no-party" system of government, but critics of Museveni's government have described the rule of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) as a mere disguise for a single-party system. The NRM's ascendancy on the political scene was confirmed by Museveni's re-election as president in March 2001 with 69.3 percent of the valid vote, and the subsequent election, in June 2001, of 230 (from a total of 282) parliamentarians considered to be sympathetic to him, the Economist Intelligence Unit reported in July. The NRM's National Executive Committee (NEC) in mid-December suspended an internal debate on the possible reintroduction of multiparty politics in Uganda, in order "to give a chance to people to submit their views to the Constitutional Review Commission [CRC] without bias", The New Vision reported. The suspension was regarded by analysts as a victory for Museveni in sidelining those elements of the NRM who are keen to edge Uganda back to multiparty democracy sooner rather than later. Sophie Kyagulani, a member of the Kampala-based Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, which on Saturday condemned the police action on radio, told IRIN on Monday that some parts of the Ugandan constitution guaranteed individual freedoms, including the freedom of association, yet the same rights were taken away under Article 269. "It is clear that rights of association are being violated," she added. Amnesty International in September 2001 decried the "growing repression of any form of non-violent opposition to the Ugandan government. Since the presidential elections, "basic internationally recognised freedoms of expression, association and movement have become even more strictly curtailed," it said in a press release. However, Kyagulani said it would be "hard for government to silence the political parties" and that she would not rule out more violence if another rally took place. "We can't rule out the fact that the same thing, or worse, can happen if they [the UPC] go for another rally," she added.