Otunnu: Investigate Luweero massacres

Kampala

Olara Otunnu turned up for his first press conference as UPC leader on Monday wearing the same type of shirt he has worn over the last three days but his message went back more than 20 years ago. Mr Otunnu, elected UPC party president on Saturday night, called for an independent inquiry into the killings in Luweero, which saw the fiercest fighting between President Museveni’s National Resistance Army and Obote’s UPC government between 1981 and 1985.

Punish the guilty
“UPC calls for a complete, independent and an in-depth investigation into what happened in Luweero Triangle and those who committed the atrocities held accountable,” Mr Otunnu said.

“I don’t care whether the person who committed the atrocities bears the name of a Muganda, Ankole or an Acholi; we must have the inquiry done and chips fall where they lie,” he said. “A lot of innocent people were caught up in crossfire and UPC calls for thorough investigation. Whoever will be found guilty be held responsible for their actions. Whether NRA or Museveni himself, they must be dealt with and held responsible.”

President Museveni, whose fighters ousted the Tito Okello regime in 1986, a year after Obote had been overthrown in a coup, has always blamed the Uganda National Liberation Army under the UPC of having committed atrocities and killed many of the 250,000 people believed to have died in the five-year war, most of them civilians.

In the 1996 election, President Museveni used threats of Obote’s return – complete with newspaper adverts of skulls – to scare voters in Luweero Triangle and elsewhere to vote for him.

Obote’s denial
Before his death in 2005, former President Milton Obote had consistently denied committing atrocities in the Luweero Triangle. In a dossier written in 1990 while in exile in Zambia, Obote accused NRA rebels of committing atrocities in Luweero and blaming them on government troops to turn the population against them.

Questioning record
Mr Otunnu served as Ambassador to the UN under Obote and as Foreign Affairs Minister under Tito Okello. He was also involved in the failed peace talks in Nairobi between the late Okello and Mr Museveni before leaving for exile and a long diplomatic career in the United Nations.

Monday's comments seem to indicate that Otunnu, who has previously accused the Museveni government of genocide in northern Uganda during the two-decade war against the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, will use his time as UPC leader to question the NRM government’s record on governance and human rights.

NRM deputy spokesperson Ofwono Opondo dismissed Mr Otunnu’s demands as an “old song”. He said: “Dr Otunnu has been saying that we committed atrocities in Luweero Triangle and Northern Uganda and that we took [the army] to infect HIV to women in northern Uganda.”

Urging the opposition leader to report the matter to the International Criminal Court if he has evidence, Mr Opondo said: “Mr Otunnu is campaigning for presidency and so let him campaign and became the president and thereafter institute his own inquiry or arrest those he thinks committed the atrocities.”

Mr John Nagenda, a senior advisor to President Museveni and one of the brains behind the skulls campaign in 1996 said yesterday that it was the government of the day, not NRA, that killed civilians in the area. “It now seems that the history of Luweero is being rewritten by Mr Otuunu because to the common knowledge, many people are still alive and know what exactly happened.”

At yesterday’s press conference, Mr Otunnu also took time to explain why he is unmarried at 58, pointing out that he should be judged by his ability, not marital status. “Uganda needs more business rather than moving with another person in your arms,” Mr Otunnu said. He added that former president Obote and former Indian Prime Minister Mahatma Ghandi took office while single.

Mr Otunnu has also urged the Democratic Party to join the Interparty Cooperation in order to strengthen the opposition.