Aronda faults police over Besigye’s arrest

By Tabu Butagira 

The Chief of Defence Forces yesterday said the walk-to-work protests could have been handled differently from the violence deployed by the police over the last three weeks.

Gen. Aronda Nyakairima also defended the military’s involvement in quelling the demonstrations which were called in reaction to the high fuel prices and rising cost of living, but said last Thursday’s violent arrest of opposition leader Kizza Besigye could have been more civil.

In his first public comments on the Activists For Change-engineered protests, and the arrest that has drawn worldwide condemnation, Gen. Nyakairima said the opposition politician could have been stopped or arrested as he left his Kasangati home since there was a standing court order binding him not to breach public peace for seven months.

In the alternative, he suggested, the vehicle in which Dr Besigye was travelling could have been towed to a nearby police station, or an anti-terrorism expert called in to open it with a master key while on the road so that Dr Besigye could be asked to evacuate.

According to Gen. Nyakairima, the use of excessive force by state agents during last week’s melee at the Mulago Roundabout would be the last, but most unlikely option to take. And even then, he said, there would not have been any need for those assigned the task to be “hooded like a terminator”.
On the fateful day, an unidentified hooded man dressed in civilian clothes approached Dr Besigye’s Toyota V8 Land Cruiser from the rear and drew a hammer to shatter its windscreen, before losing grip of the weapon which then fell inside the car.

On the other side of the vehicle, Gilbert Bwana Arinaitwe, said to be a CID officer with the Rapid Response Unit also smashed the windscreens using a pistol butt before attacking Dr Besigye with a sustained blast of pepper spray in the eyes and all over his upper body. Other individuals travelling in the car were also doused in the spray.

Exclusive pictures published by this newspaper yesterday capturing the hammer-man in action set the agenda for public debate and appeared to deprive government of its much-trumpeted defence that security forces grabbed the tool from Dr Besigye after he first hit one of them.

During yesterday’s roundtable discussion with selected journalists at the Army headq uarters in Mbuya, a Kampala suburb, Gen. Nyakairima said he offered a “small” contingent, comprising mainly military police, as “reinforcement” on the request of Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura.

Although during the Friday riots, First Son Lt. Col. Kainerugaba Muhoozi, who commands the Special Forces Group, took charge of the protests at Kisekka Market in downtown Kampala.

“The specific orders for the [anti-demonstration] operation are issued by the IGP,” he said, declining to take personal responsibility for persons allegedly shot dead by soldiers.

Efforts to reach both Maj. Gen. Kayihura and police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba were futile by press time.

To investigate
Earlier, the CDF revealed that he was the first to take charge of the police when President Museveni’s then National Resistance Army rebels captured power in 1986 and knows that any shooting by police should “disable [a suspect] to effect their arrest, and not to kill.”

Some security operatives, he said, could be acting out of panic.

“If we find that someone did kill deliberately or when it was unnecessary, we try you,” he said. Gen. Nyakairima said in coming days, more soldiers will deploy on the streets to ensure President Museveni is sworn-in without incident on May 12.

Uganda’s opposition politicians emphasise citizens’ rights (to demonstrate) but not related responsibilities which come with the exercise of this right, the army chief said.
Government’s alleged highhanded crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, marked by shooting and imprisonment of leading opposition politicians, has been condemned by human rights campaigners and the country’s development partners.

Citing previous encounters culminating in invasion of Sudan and later the Democratic Republic of Congo, the CDF said Uganda is a fragile country where irresponsible reporting by journalists can “take up in smoke”.

tbutagira@ug.nationmedia.com