Police ban Besigye from parts of city

Riot and traffic police officers block Dr Kizza Besigye’s car on Kampala Road yesterday. The former FDC leader has been denied access to some parts of the city, a thing he says denies him a right to privacy. PHOTO BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA 

By Solomon Arinaitwe
 

 

The police yesterday stepped up its restrictions on opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s movement around the city with the Force, saying the politician plans to cause chaos in town if he is allowed freedom to go wherever he pleases. Mr Patrick Onyango, the deputy police spokesman, said the Force had information that Dr Besigye “was planning to cause chaos”.

“Today (Monday), he had planned to go to Owino Market to eat and cause chaos. The moment we get information that he is planning to cause chaos, we shall not allow him to move,” Mr Onyango said.


Until recently, the police had relaxed deployment in the
neighbourhood of his Kasangati-based home after Dr Besigye left the country for a routine trip to the United States last month. Police patrol vehicles withdrew from his gate and near his home.

Yesterday, police stopped Dr Besigye from using selected routes in the city and its suburbs, and instead imposed upon him a road chart.

However, when Dr Besigye returned last week on Wednesday, he beat police surveillance the following day to enter the city centre. A combined military and police operation was marshalled to contain him.

In the ensuing chaos which broke out when security forces opened fire and lobbed tear gas around the busy downtown, at least two people were shot and several injured.

The former FDC leader was arrested and detained for a day, for what the police called inciting violence.

The following day, two patrol pick-up trucks escorted him to Case Clinic where he had gone to visit hospitalised city Mayor Erias Lukwago.

“I have to go to my usual businesses. I have to go to the bank because last time they never allowed me to go there,” Dr Besigye insisted.

But the police maintained that it will continue blocking Dr Besigye from accessing certain roads in the city if it gets intelligence information that he is likely to cause chaos.

After rejecting the 2011 poll results, insisting they were rigged, Dr Besigye said he would participate in protests against widespread corruption and bad governance under the aegis of a pressure group, Activists for Change.

Last year, the Attorney General, Mr Peter Nyombi, declared the group as unlawful but the activists regrouped under the banner of For God and My Country.

The police have since broken up any attempt by Dr Besigye and other opposition politicians to hold public rallies.

Similarly, since the 2011 walk to work protests against rising fuel and commodity prices, the police have routinely been forcibly keeping Dr Besigye at home under “preventive arrest”, citing a colonial era of preventive detention ordinance.

At the height of walk to work, scores were injured and several people killed from gunshot wounds sustained as the security forces clamped down on the countrywide protests.

In several incidents, Dr Besigye was detained, dragged to court and suffered severe injuries which at one point led to his hospitalisation in Nairobi, Kenya.



It was this that drew the attention of rights groups, who denounced the police’s actions as high-handed, brutal and a violation of civil liberties and fundamental human rights.