VIDEO: #Obote, Iddi #Amin and #Museveni debate #torture in #Uganda

(Warning:  this is satire)

MODERATOR:

Your Excellencies, you have ruled Uganda at different times but your legacies are marked by gross abuse of human rights like torture of citizens. It’s as if you attended the same school because the methods are identical.  What's your take?

MUSEVENI:

First, it is wrong to assume that torture in Uganda is associated with only the post independence governments. In 1886 King Mwanga burnt to death Christian converts. Colonial administration was as brutal as the post independence governments and that's why we retained their oppressive and draconian laws.  Secondly, it is also wrong to insinuate that we attended the same school because of the three of us, I am the only University graduate.  Even unlike the illiterate and semi illiterate security officers who served under these two gentlemen, my security officers are University graduates thus their superiority.

DR. OBOTE:

Museveni is a consummate liar who only tells the truth by accident.  His opening statement above is misleading.  For the record, Museveni is my student of politics but for violence, it is his inborn character. In 1971 Iddi Amin overthrew my government before I could fully study Museveni whom I had just recruited into state security services.  When we were in exile in Tanzania, he carried out a lot of counter revolutionary acts designed to undermine my leadership of anti Amin exile groups.  His treachery was responsible for much of the violence that was netted out on our supporters inside Uganda during the regime of my brother here (Iddi Amin).

MODERATOR (interjects):

Dr. Obote, you mean to say Museveni was an agent of the Iddi Amin regime!

DR. OBOTE:

While in Tanzania, Museveni proved too ambitious and power thirsty.  He repeatedly lied to the Tanzanian government that UPC and Dr. Obote were unpopular in Uganda.  He would gather information about our plans and would ensure that it indirectly leaked to the Amin government in Kampala thus compromising our operatives and contacts inside Uganda.  That is how he ended up being detained several times by the Tanzanian authorities.  To outsmart UPC and Dr. Obote, he would recklessly carry out his so called clandestine missions inside Uganda such that many of our young men who associated with him would be captured and executed but for him he would survive like the film legend John Rambo.

MODERATOR: Iddi Amin, Dr. Obote has exonerated your regime which is reputed for killing half a million Ugandans.  Have you now reconciled with Dr. Obote?

AMIN:

Dr. Obote was my Commander in Chief who found me fit to lead the national army.  Five Hundred Thousand people killed during my reign; that is propaganda.  I challenge anyone to name just one hundred people killed during my reign; date, place, their addressees, age and sex.  Yes, my government constitutionally tried, convicted and publicly executed a few people involved in treasonous activities as confirmed by Dr. Obote.

MUSEVENI (interjects)

You ran torture chambers where thousands were killed.

AMIN:

After I was overthrown I went into exile in Saudi Arabia. I did not see any of my security agents there; why didn't the successive governments arrest and cause them to account for such alleged atrocities? Why is it that the so called Iddi Amin torture chambers were preserved and treated as the most sacred places by successive governments?  They are now MUSEVENI'S most sacred places of crimes against humanity; Makindye Barracks, Nakasero State Research Bureau headquarters, Naguru and other places.

MODERATOR:

Dr. Obote, why didn't your government pursue and bring to justice former Iddi Amin agents who were accused of having tortured and killed Ugandans?

Dr. OBOTE:

Let me set the record straight.  The second UPC government that I led assumed office in December 1980 following three successive post Iddi Amin governments; Yusuf Lule, Godfrey Binaisa and Military Commission.  Former Iddi Amin security officers had fled to Congo and Sudan and were already waging a comeback war.  Two weeks after the December 1980 elections that brought my second UPC government to power, Museveni launched his selfish Bush War.  He incorporated a number of former Iddi Amin security agents and that is partly why we referred to his NRA as bandits.  In July 1986, my government was overthrown and these former Iddi Amin soldiers joined hands with the short lived Okello Junta before they settled down in the Museveni government.

MODERATOR (interjects)

But Dr. Obote, your government is accused of having tortured, maimed and killed an estimated 300,000 Ugandans.

DR. OBOTE:

Point out to me any single member of former UNLA soldier, NASA, or party functionary who was pursued and charged with torturing and killing Ugandans between 1981 and 1985.

MUSEVENI (interjects)

Chris Rwakasisi was sentenced to death and Musa Ssebirumbi who was hanged.

DR. OBOTE:

Chris was my Minister in charge of security.  His conviction was politically motivated owing to his alleged role in expelling of Rwandese refugees around 1983.  His conviction just like his later pardoning was based on ethnic considerations i.e. to appease the Rwandese and Bairu respectively.  Haji Musa Ssebirumbi had been the UPC and Chairman for Luwero district when he almost captured Museveni during the Bush War hence why he was later hanged.

Museveni paraded a number of skulls around Luwero that were allegedly associated with the government soldiers (UNLA); but where are the skulls of the victims of the NRA bullets - both UNLA soldiers and UPC local functionaries?  How come the so-called NRA's Kadogo orphans were only males; what about the female orphans? 

When I assumed the presidency in December 1980, I adopted security forces that had been assembled by Museveni who had been the Minister of Defence and Vice Chairman of the Military Commission right from the time Iddi Amin was overthrown in April 1979.  The conduct of these security forces to some extent was dependent upon the mode of recruitment and mentorship by Museveni. That is why the so-called NRA/UPDF is nothing but a remodeled UNLA.  Otherwise, let Museveni tell Ugandans the number of former security officers that he made to account for the so-called atrocities in Luwero during the Bush War.

MODERATOR:

Iddi Ami, I can see you smiling; events seem to exonerate you. Are you innocent?

IDDI AMIN:

Very innocent indeed and that is why Ugandans are yearning for my leadership.  For decades, these two gentlemen (Obote and Museveni) wrongly used their upper hand in formal education to spread harmful propaganda against Iddi Amin.  They successfully connived with the west to poison the minds of Ugandans and the world.  Alhamdhulilah, Ugandan now know that Iddi Amin was a patriot who had Uganda at heart.  I challenge anyone to conduct a free and fair election for the Presidency of Uganda where the three of us are contestants and I prove my point.

MODERATOR:

Mr. Museveni, you have always claimed that you don't support impunity.  When will Ugandans see the people you claim to have been torturing and killing Ugandans made to answer for their crimes?  Who and where are they?

MUSEVENI:

When we took over government in 1986, we adopted the policy of reconciliation for the good of national healing.  We opted to rehabilitate and incorporate some of these people who had wronged Ugandans.  A classic example is the son of Iddi Amin, Gen. Taban who is the Deputy Director General of Internal Security.  Taban had caused mayhem at Makerere University in the 1970s.  I pardoned Obote's Minister, Rwakasisi who is now my Advisor on something I don't remember well.  With many others who have served us in different capacities, we managed to reconcile Ugandans and move forward.

MODERATOR:

Mr. Museveni, your regime seems to be outwitting these two past leaders in as far as commission of atrocities against Ugandans is concerned.  It is like they left some Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) literature on the walls of those torture dungeons from which your security officers are reading.

MUSEVENI:

Such a blanket Judgement is unfair.  First of all, while they (Amin and Obote men) used illiterate and semi illiterate agents, we are using university graduates.  We have a friendly parliament, Judiciary/prosecutorial agency, which makes and interprets favourable legal regimes in defence of our actions.  The other day I saw this lady, Speaker of Parliament, ordering for a parliamentary probe into alleged tortures at Nalufenya.  That is a waste of time and resources because our boys are not idiots like had been the case with past regimes.  I am sure police chief; Kale has prepared them a wonderful reception.

They will be hosted into cleaned and polished floors and walls of the facility on top of our security officers posing as detainees to give positive information.  We have our own Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) with some mandate of providing a cover up to our actions.  Moreover, this is not the first-time parliament is poking its nose in law enforcement.  What happened to previous findings about torture in ungazetted places dubbed Safe Houses? 

What about the so-called atrocities during counter insurgency operations in the North and East of the country and let alone the recent massacres in Kasese?  It is the same parliament that has just renewed the police Chief's contract, idiots just.

Next month the same hypocrites will be approving huge financing for the sustenance of the so-called torturers and torture facilities. Such public outcries about torture and high handedness keep coming up.  Human rights organisations compile and launch reports but they all end up in archives and this one too is headed for the same fate. 

We have the West on our side and if they dare to depart from our cause, we shall as usual threaten to withdraw from Somalia and other regional peace keeping missions and they will go on their knees apologising.  We have a new tool to hook them - liberal refugee policy where we host over a million refugees thus attracting huge funding.  If God answers our prayers and this Trump man is impeached, then the sky will be the limit.

MODERATOR:

Mr. Museveni, it’s like you are confessing to crimes against humanity.  For the record, does your government torture Ugandans?

MUSEVENI:

What you call torture is what we revolutionaries call revolutionary violence - which is acceptable as opposed to the backward violence that was practiced by past regimes.

MODERATOR (interjects)

What is the difference?

MUSEVENI:

In revolutionary violence, our agents take actions meant to jealously defend the revolution.  We make them view the revolution as their own by allowing them, to among other means, accumulate personal material wealth by whatever means.  They own real property, business enterprises and fat bank accounts thus viewing the revolution as the cow that provides milk to their children.

On the contrary, security agents of past regimes accumulated no illegal wealth for themselves thus were not motivated for jealously defending their respective regimes.  Their backward violence was out of illiteracy and excitement as opposed to ideological commitment.  They stayed in government houses, did their shopping from subsidised government stores. They stole radios, watches, extorted small money at roadblocks for cigarettes and local booze. Their wives reared a few goats, rabbits and local chicken in government quarters. They sold sweets and dry fish on stalls outside their quarters. When they were threatened to be evict them, they had nothing to lose thus simply took off or surrendered.

Our boys engage in multi billion trans-boundary organised economic crimes, they put to personal use almost half of the national defence and security budget, they own big companies, invest in real estate, leading in land grabbing.  Their wives own fancy shops in expensive shopping arcades etc.  We have no doubt; they have the necessary motivation to ensure that the status quo remains intact.  For those who have been wondering as to where our security agents get the anger to carry out such brutality against those who threaten the status quo, you now know.

MODERATOR:

Mr. Museveni, are you not worried that your confession may one time be used against you before courts of law over crimes against humanity?

MUSEVENI:

No way whatsoever.  That is why we must retain the status quo.  Maybe on judgement day in heaven but again unlike earthly rulers, God is forgiving.  We shall apply for amnesty in heaven.

MODERATOR:

On this note, my guests, Dr. Obote, Gen. Iddi Amin and Gen. Museveni thank you for the wonderful insights.

Over to you Ugandans.

INFORMATION IS POWER AND DEFIANCE IS THE WAY TO GO