WARM DRUMS: “We Are Ready To Fight And Defend Our Country”

BY JOEL LULIIKO WAKAYIMA

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM |SHIFTMEDIA| Greetings from Brussels, Belgium.

I pen this letter from exile in pain. Yoweri Museveni has misruled Uganda since 1986 when he crawled to power using the gun and has since sworn to die there. Over time, his misrule has perennially been patronage-based and personal, with his family and friends at the centre of everything,

while the rest of the citizens are left to wallow in poverty.

President Museveni controls all key institutions, including parliament, the judiciary, the executive, the army and police, etc. that guarantee his survival. His ruling NRM (some media people call it the National

Robbery Movement) party dominates all levels of the state. All opposition forces, have been denied money, time and space to organize and sell their agenda.

The long-term significance of emerging political leaders and new forms of protest

remains uncertain as does the potential mobilization of discontented youths. This is our biggest challenge as victims of the hegemony in Uganda today and it is one of the greatest THREATS to our existence as the 15 nations that form the country – Uganda.

His, (Museveni’s ) misrule is guided and premised on evil worship, among other strange things. We can prove this at anyone’s request.

UGANDANS ARE LOCKED IN A BRUTAL OLIGARCHY DISGUISING ITSELF AS A DEMOCRACY

As we all know, Uganda suffers from patronage politics- the type seen during medieval ages and a downward spiral of declining governance, poor economic performance, massive corruption, ineptitude, embezzlement and insecurity, among other evils.

Museveni paid and intimidated members of parliament to change the law on presidential term limits. He then went to intimidate parliament to change the law on presidential age limit. These are intolerable evils by all standards.

Presently, Yoweri Museveni is being cornered with more questions about the numerous mass murders across the country, disappearances, torture, mind-boggling levels of corruption, embezzlement, extortion, bribery, land grabbing and impoverishment of about 80% the population and questions about his education, ancestry, and wealth.

Meanwhile, he has been on national and international television on numerous occasions reasoning that he has nothing to do with the development and or welfare the people of Uganda, but that he is there solely for the well-being of his children, grandchildren and relatives.

The decline in governance has ripple effects across the system. It stymies attempts to improve core services – particularly infrastructure and agriculture – that are strained by the demands of a rapidly growing population.

Uganda is endowed with a bulging young population in their millions to the tune of about 75% (below 35 years), meaning just 0.25 of this group is more than what we want to defeat the military junta. A motivation for war.

Museveni and the ‘MY OIL’ mentality

Urgent infrastructure projects and the long-anticipated start of oil production have suffered inexplicable delays, further depressing comprehensive international investment. Besides, the president’s routine allusion to the oil resource as his property erodes any hope of oil being an answer to the question of rampant abject poverty and hopelessness across the country. We fear there will be no accountability for the money accruing from oil.

New government initiatives, nominally aimed at stimulating the economy, typically take the form of handouts, bribes for political mileage, particularly to under- or unemployed youths, designed to secure political support. The likewise politically-motivated creation of new administrative districts has not improved local services, but instead increased the size of the public sector, further straining an already overwhelmed public purse.

New districts also contribute to communal tensions, particularly when delimitation reallocates control over natural resources and land.

Security issues

The security sector, crammed with an inexplicable proliferations of bogus militia groups, particularly the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Force (UPDF) and its military intelligence branch, Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI), the dreaded crime preventers (who actually work to promote crime instead), Special Forces Command (SFC), Kalangala Action Plan, Bodaboda 2010, Internal Security Organization (ISO) and its District Security Organizations (DISO), County and Sub County Security Organisation Local councils, Joint Anti -terrorism Task Force (JATT),and other security agencies have tortured people time and again as they please, with mindboggling impunity.

Scores have either been killed, or left maimed after torture in hundreds(420) of “Safe Houses” spread across Uganda’s capital, Kampala and Uganda.

Thousands of people including Members of Parliament have testified about the horror taking place in these torture chambers.

GOVT IS TAPPING PHONES AND HACKING COMPUTERS

Police officers are supposed to carry out functions that are nominally intended to preserve public order BUT in reality these officers function as the president’s first line of defense against rivals and legitimate questioners about excesses.

They take PAINFULLY long to investigate regular crime yet they are inexplicably super quick to arrest opposition politicians, activists and journalists, usually at the

slightest suspicion and without prior investigation/thought. They waste country time disrupting opposition activities, to the detriment of genuine police work.

There’s no longer any difference between police and the junta military. And wherever these two are fused, the military junta tactics of torture, arbitrary arrests, rape, squeezing men’s testicles, squeezing women’s breasts etc. reign supreme.

As opposition parties and activists run around organizing to participate in what they think is a democratic dispensation, the PI (Privacy International), for example, reports that behind the scenes, officials of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI), VCCU, and Uganda Police Force (UPF), SFC and others, acting on presidential orders, are using an intrusion malware, short for malicious software, to infect the communications devices of key opposition leaders, activists, bloggers, religious leaders leaning on the side of opposition and media personnel and establishment insiders.

Over a long period of time, operatives bribed and have continued to bribe people close to their targets to get access to personal phones and computers on which they installed the malware, according to a confidential intelligence brief prepared for President Museveni.

GERMANY AND THE UK COMPANIES TRAINED THE GOVT HACKERS

The document was published by PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL. Link is no longer available, as at the time of writing this. We suspect the regime used hackers to expunge it by training Ugandan officials on the use of Fin-Fisher, Gamma International GmbH(Germany branch) provided indirect support.

According to investigations by PI (Privacy International), Gamma welcomed and trained regime operatives on these technologies.

For example, In December 2011 four Ugandan officials were airlifted to Germany and

trained on how to use the FinFisher Malware to track phones and computers used by opposition members. Since then every member of the opposition (with political substance) has been well tracked and cared for, ‘’properly’’.

FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY UGANDA

JOEL WAKAYIMA

SPOKESPERSON,

SUPER COALITION AGAINST THE DESPOTS(SCAD)