Government denies military training plans for returnees

The Ugandan government has no official plans to subject a group of returnees recently expelled from Tanzania, where they had been living, to military and political training, a senior official in the Office of the Prime Minister has told IRIN. The New Vision government-owned newspaper reported on Monday that the at least 3,000 returnees from Tanzania, where they have lived for decades, were to undergo a political and military course aimed at orientating them to Uganda's governance system. The Ugandan returnees, mainly ethnic Bakiga cattle herders, were expelled from Tanzania, allegedly for voting against Tanzania's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party in elections in October 2000, according to media reports in January. Those reports alleged that the expulsions were effected after CCM lost the elections in the northwestern Tanzanian district of Karagwe, Kagera Region, where the long-time Ugandan settlers were then living. Quoting John Kamuningi, chairman of the Kahunge sub-county in Kamwenge District, to which the returnees are being relocated, the paper said the course, known in Uganda as "Chakamchaka", was aimed at "exposing" the returnees to the ruling National Resistance Movement's system of governance. Under the Movement or "no-party" system of government, political parties are allowed to exist but not to organise. President Yoweri Museveni has argued that this is an alternate form of democratic governance, because Uganda's troubled past is due to political parties exploiting ethnic, tribal and religious divisions. However, human rights and opposition groups have complained that this the Movement system provides, in effect, for undemocratic, single-party rule in Uganda. Martin Owuor, Assistant Commissioner in the Disaster Preparedness and Prevention department of the Office of the Prime Minister, told IRIN on Monday, that the Ugandan authorities had not made any plan to expose the returnees from Tanzania to the Chakamchaka programme. "We have no such plans. An LC2 chairman [at the village level, such as Kamuningi] in not a policy maker," Owuor said. "[An] LC2 is a leader at the lowest level. He has no budget." Chakamchaka is a political and semi-military education programme which the Ugandan government introduced in the 1980s as a way of disarming and reintegrating the general public through education after years of civil war, according to Owuor. Under the programme, the public was mobilised and trained in military skills to disarm troublesome armed groups, as well as to reduce the ethnic hatred among Ugandans resulting from the civil war, he said. "There was a lot of hatred in Uganda at the time. There were too many guns in the wrong hands. The population was mobilised to learn how to disarm armed thugs," Owuor told IRIN. He said the government had seen no pressing need for the returnees to undergo that course. He noted, however, that he did not rule out the possibility of the authorities arranging for them to receive the training on a voluntary basis, if the need arose. "I don't know in this case if there is any need. But if they are interested to know more about Uganda, because they have been outside the country for at least 30 years, then the authorities can arrange for them to take the course. But it is not forced," he added. The returnees have been living in difficult conditions in a waterlogged camp in Kikagati, with poor sanitation and the threat of disease, and where up to 42 deaths have been recorded - notably of malaria and cholera, according to humanitarian and media reports. The Ugandan government is now in the process of relocating them from Kikagati, Mbarara District in southern Uganda, to neighbouring Kamwenge District. At least two-thirds of the 2, 800 returnees have been resettled at their new location, according to Owuor. "What I know is that out of the 2,800, at least 2,000 have moved," he said on Monday. Aid agencies like the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), the United States-based Samaritan's Purse, Oxfam, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), are also involved in the resettlement programme, according to Owuor. WFP said on 18 April that it was giving each of the 700 families food to last three months, after which they were expected to harvest their first crop at their new location. "We distributed food in January when they were still in Kikagati, because they were in bad shape," Laura Melo, WFP spokeswoman for eastern Africa, told IRIN. "We are now giving them food assistance for three months, as well as fuel, axes and utensils to help them resettle. [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27337] Melo said that WFP, which had already distributed the first month's ration, intended to distribute a total of 150 mt of food to the returnees for the next three months.