Reported by
Faridah N Kulumba
Africa-Press – Uganda. The National Unity Platform party (NUP) president Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobie Wine, resolves to petition Uganda’s Ministry of Defense and Chief of Defense Forces, over continued detention of his party members and supporters.
Kyagulanyi says over 243 people have been detained, but many more have been arrested and held without due process of a law.
He said this while addressing journalists at the party headquarter in Kampala Bobie said that he expects the Ministry of Defense and the Chief of Defense Forces to have his people released unconditionally.
“We are going to deliver a letter, demanding for our people to the Chief of Defense Forces General David Muhoozi and to the Ministry of Defense. We want to call on them to release our people. General Museveni came out and said his the military that has been abducting them, precisely the SFC,” said Bobie.
Kyagulanyi added that they will continue demanding for freedom of his supporters, most of whom he says were kidnapped and tortured by security operatives and vowed to continue protesting peacefully because it is within the law.
Bobie Wine’s Supporters arrest
According to NUP leader Mr Kyagulanyi, hundreds of his supporters started missing after they were arrested during and after 14 January 2021 elections, where president Museveni was declared as a winner.
Bobie Wine estimated that over 3000 members of his party were taken by authority, claiming that they were abducted by plain-clothed members of Uganda’s defense forces mostly at night, who picked them from their homes.
Tension is rising among NUP party members and some families, over the alleged forced disappearance of dissidents across the country following the month of 2021 general elections.
“The pain of parents whose children have been abducted by the Museveni dictatorship for simply supporting me and NUP, these young people are tortured and some murdered, we want the world to stand with Uganda in these very dark days,” Bobie twitted.
The journey to deliver the petition
Kyagulanyion on his way to deliver the petition police and army intercepted him and forcefully returned him home, saying that they were not aware of his plans to take the petition to the army headquarters in Mbuya.
The police spokesman Kampala Metropolitan area Patric Onyango said that they picked Kyagulanyi and drove back home as a precautionary measure.
“Honourable Kyagulanyi had planned his protest as earlier he announced. And today he was going to Mbuya Army headquarters, and from there he had planned other series of protests within the city centre, so we got him and took him back to his home.” said Onyango.
While speaking to African Press Kyagulanyi’s lawyer and member of parliament elect Muwada Nkunnyinji said that what Kyagulanyi was doing was within the law.
“This is with the law and we have the right to do so. Because what we are agitating for is total respect to the rule of law and restrain from arbitrary arrest of our people, because being a supporter of NUP isn’t an offense and we insist so,” said Nkunnyinji.
Does the government of Uganda admit abduction acts?
President Museveni and his ministers weeks back admitted that hundreds of Ugandans are in military detention but say they will either force military tribunal or be released
“The children who were arrested by the security forces, many of them have been talked to and given us a lot of information and we have helped them to go back to their families,” Museven said.
Last week Human Rights Watch, called for an end to what it called “ongoing abductions by suspected state agents and cease the unlawful detention without trial of opposition supporters.
