Gangs force Bukedea residents to flee homes
What you need to know:
- Mr Ezera Tugume, the district police commander, declined to comment on the security situation in the district.
- Mr Ramathan Walugembe, the Resident District Commissioner, admitted that gangs were terrorising the community, adding that they have not been arrested.
Residents of Bukedea District are living in fear following the emergence of gangs in the area.
The gangs have forced residents to sleep as early as 7pm or abandon their homes.
Ms Grace Achipa, a resident of Bukedea Town Council, told Daily Monitor that gangs force them to open their houses and rob them.
“They mainly move in big numbers. We do not know where they have come from and security people are not helping us,” she said.
Mr Arafat Oyo, the spokesperson of the NRM youth in the district, said the gangs broke into his house, adding that he reported the case to police but was not helped.
“These people are known but police cannot arrest them. We wonder whether these gangs work together with the police,” he said.
Recently, the Mbale High Court resident judge, Susan Okalany, who also hails from Bukedea, petitioned the Office of the President and Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) seeking protection from what she called a cartel of gangs.
Alliance Advocates, her lawyers, claim that assassins had already been hired to kill her for intervening in a neighbouring cattle market revenue collection conflict.
Suspected gangs attacked revenue officials on October 16.
“It is, therefore, not surprising that the victims were helplessly beaten and hacked with deadly weapons with no one to rescue them. This was very deplorable,” the lawyers wrote.
Mr John Omoding, the Amujaju Village chairperson in Kabarwa Sub-county, said the suspects could have been part of those that participated in evicting several families in the area.
On May 4, more than 1,000 families in Amujaju were forcefully evicted from their ancestral land reportedly on the orders of State House officials to pave way for the construction of a military barracks in the same place.
Daily Monitor could not independently verify these allegations since Mr Don Wanyama, the Senior Presidential Press Secretary, was unable to pick our repeated calls.
The disputed land was then surveyed and nobody has since been allowed to step in forcing many families to live in makeshift strucutres in nearby trading centres.
Mr Ezera Tugume, the district police commander, declined to comment on the security situation in the district.
Mr Ramathan Walugembe, the Resident District Commissioner, admitted that gangs were terrorising the community, adding that they have not been arrested.
