FDC PRESS STATEMENT APRIL 6th 2020
BACKGROUND
The severity of Corona virus that causes Covid 19, whose control measures continue to keep us home, has grounded our country. The measures adopted globally to contain the spread such as `stay home` have curtailed our freedoms including movement and association.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) would like to once again appeal to the public to observe these measures. Experts have advised that this is the only way, we will stop the spread and eliminate the virus so we resume our normal lives.
We would like to express sympathy with all of you Ugandans who have been harshly affected by these measures especially the urban poor. We appeal to all of you to share the little that you have so we don’t lose any life to starvation. We salute the health workers and all service providers that are keeping us alive during this trying moment. Of course many of us in FDC have tested the involuntary stay home imposed on us repeatedly by Mr. Museveni’s government. It is a very bad experience. But please let us endure it for the sake of our country. Knowing the status of our healthcare, the last thing we can do is to allow the spread of corona like it is currently happening in Europe, America and other countries.
POLICE, UPDF BRUTALITY
We are saddened but of course not surprised by the conduct of our security personnel especially during the hours of curfew (night). We have watched on televisions scores of uniformed personnel both Police and the army battering citizens and raiding homes in the name of the curfew.
These policemen and military men equipped with guns and sticks are even removing citizens from their homes and beating them. A few exposed by the media have been arrested. We thank the media for this brave coverage. Unfortunately the media has itself become a target.
The FDC holds Mr. Yoweri Museveni responsible for this brutality. He has been an advocate of brutality and publicly praising officers such as Gen. Kale Kayihura for brutalizing his opponents. This is how he has trained both Police and UPDF unfortunately. Isn’t this how they have treated the opposition for this long?
Our public meetings are violently dispersed and Museveni’s propagandists paid for using taxpayers’ money often twist facts to blame victims. That is what various army and police spokespersons are doing. They are accusing their victims of throwing stones at them. Which stones did the Bukedde journalist threw at security personnel in Mukono? Let us face it, our forces are brutal. You can see happiness on their faces as they administer kiboko even to pregnant women.
And the punishment which is usually a public relations stunt is caution or reprimand. Personnel involved in battering citizens must be expelled from the force and charged under the anti-torture act. Whose is buying these people sticks? All these must answer. UPDF and Police have become regime protectors ready to pounce at the population at slightest provocation. Of course some personal are professional and good mannered but many of their superiors are regime apologists.
USING RELIEF FOR CHEAP POPURALITY
Distribution of food which the FDC thinks is not enough started on Saturday in Kampala. The distribution should have started immediately the stay home measure was announced. We have thousands of citizens are right now starving. What a sensible government should have done is to form constituency relief/corona committees that should have been charged with food distribution simultaneously. Instead distribution is being done by the same team. So Wakiso has to wait until Kampala is covered. Registration of beneficiaries has also been riddled with the usual incompetences. Names of people who have been hit hard by the lockdown are being removed from the register by RDCs and NRM vigilantes.
As FDC, we think local committees should be entrusted with registration and distribution. The food should also be enough to feed families for the whole duration of the lockdown. Failure to feed people is what is causing problems in India. Slum areas should be especially targeted because of the sheer congestion. In fact, special committees should be formed and deployed in these areas for the whole duration of the lockdown. Residents of these areas must be feed properly and advised to stay home.
