Fearful Uganda: stark evidence of brutal killings

Press, 30 August 1984, Page 21

Fearful Uganda: stark evidence of brutal killings

At night, the Ugandan capital, Kampala, is a frightening place. Gunfire rings out from time to time in the darkness. Few people venture on to the streets. As a British expatriate told me: “Sometimes it sounds like a small war out there.”

For five nights I waited for the contacts I hoped would lead me out into the bush to meet antiGovernment guerrillas and to investigate atrocities allegedly carried out by Government troops. It was a nerve-wracking period. One night a policeman flagged down a car I was in, brandished a rifle, and demanded cigarettes and money before he allowed us to drive on. On another occasion our car was stopped at a police roadblock as we attempted to leave the town. Three guerrillas with me were arrested, but were released next morning after payment of a 75,000 shilling bribe — about $425. Finally, it was decided I should walk out of Kampala. In the moonlight, I was led by a guide to a small camp five miles outside the suburbs. There we picked up an escort of six armed men and began a swift march through the desolate area north of Kampala. Roads had returned to bush, and mud houses had gaping holes where doors, shutters, and tin roofs had been stolen.

There are still people in this wilderness, but they are hiding deep in the bush. Their fields,, which once provided matoke (green banana) for Kampala, and coffee and cotton for export, remain uncultivated. Beneath the mango trees the fruit rots on the ground. This fertile farmland was once the richest area of Uganda. In the morning we arrived at a large camp where several hundred soldiers of the National Resistance Army (N.R.A.) are based. Hidden deep in a forest luxuriant with creepers and undergrowth, Task Force, the front line zonal unit of the N.R.A., is well concealed. Its only entrance is a tortuous swampy path. Despite my exhaustion, I was not allowed into the camp until I had been identified and searched. Here I found my escort of 50 armed men.

Later on in my 10-day visit, I saw«larger camps including one called Eduardo Mondlane, near Semuto, where there must have been 1000 people, many of them soldiers but also medical staff, civilian supporters, Government Army prisoners, and political officers of the National Resistance Council. In all the camps I visited, military discipline was strict. Often, ragged soldiers stood sharply to attention in the presence of their superiors and well camouflaged trenches surrounded the camps. Basic hygiene is carefully maintained and there is little drinking or womanising. Morale appeared to be high, both among the officer class — mostly young

intellectuals and former career soldiers in the Government Army — and among the ranks — mostly young peasants from Buganda and Ankole. There has been a war of resistance in the Buganda area ever since elections in December, 1980, returned Milton Obote and his Uganda People’s Congress to power. Leading it is Yoweri Museveni, once Minister of Defence in the coalition government that succeeded Idi Amin. He believed the elections were rigged and the Democratic Party should have won. Two months later he took to the bush.

Museveni has become a mythical figure in Uganda. His name is never mentioned by the Government, and ordinary people will only talk of “Sunday” or “two-plus

five,” code for Mu-seven-i. Apocryphal stories circulate of how he has eluded the Army dressed as a beggar or businessman. Some peasants ascribe miraculous powers to him.

But he is a real person. I met him in an N.R.A. camp concealed beneath the scrub and thorn trees of the savannah 100 miles north of Kampala. Now 40 years old, the once skinny Museveni has put on weight and hides his baldness beneath an Army cap. His parents, members of the pastoralist Bahima clan of the Ankole, belonged to a revivalist church and Museveni still burns with an almost missionary zeal for politics. He neither smokes nor drinks, and the greatest compliment he can pay is to call someone “serious.” Most African leaders he dismisses as “not seri-

He is not an adroit politician and is apparently a poor orator. But he is a gifted military commander who inspires strong loyalty among his troops. He fought with the liberation group Frelimo in Mozambique but learned his strategy from the textbooks of Mao Tsetung, Giap, and Clausewitz. His greatest admiration is reserved for the cautious General Montgomery. “He was a scientific general,” he says.

Museveni expresses confidence about the war he is waging. “We have the capacity to overthrow Obote. All we lack is supplies,” he told me. In particular, there is a shortage of ammunition for a sustained offensive. “Our movement has no outside support,” he insisted. “If we had, Obote would not be in power now.” Uganda exiles have provided financial support, and a Libyan training scheme was only wound up late last year. The N.R.A. wants peace talks and a national government. Peasants still back the guerrillas, despite three years of fighting which has devastated the region. Those we met consistently offered water, fruit, information, or greetings to the guerrillas when they passed.

Both the guerrillas and peasants were anxious to lead me to the sites of what they claimed were Army atrocities.

Estimates of killings alleged to have taken place inside Uganda have varied widely, and it would be impossible to put a firm figure on the total. But from the grisly evidence I was shown in the course of my 10-day journey, I can only confirm that there have been horrific massacres.

I was shown five dumping grounds where there were the remains of perhaps 2000 bodies. But that is a guess. How does one count bleached bones and decomposing bodies pulled apart by animals and overgrown by bush? Half a dozen times we passed human remains on the roadside. Some had been there for months. Others were only weeks old. More important, perhaps, than the physical evidence was the testimony of civilians and former Government troops — members of the Uganda National Liberation Army (U.N.L.A.). The small town of Kapeka in Luwero district was occupied for over a year by U.N.L.A. troops from Bomba barracks until an N.R.A. attack on June 2 this year.

Several civilians and one U.N.L.A. deserter told me that the killings there took place when the U.N.L.A. interrogated the thousands of peasants who were living in Kapeka on the twice-weekly food aid distributed by the Red Cross.

Corporal Jackson Kekikomo, the U.N.L.A. deserter, was stationed in Kapeka for two months in 1983. “Intelligence officers identified people in the town thought to be

N.R.A. supporters,” he said. “Especially young boys and men. On some days 200 civilians were questioned and only about 10 survived. But killing did not continue at this rate. I personally saw perhaps 500 killed before I ran back to barracks and hid without going on parade.”

I visited the house where the killings and interrogation were alleged to have taken place. It was covered with U.N.L.A. graffiti and in one room I found blood and faeces smeared on the walls. Outside there were poorly laid out defensive trenches and a discarded Army water carrier.

Kekikomo then led us to two dumping ' grounds nearby, In a coffee shamba (field) I saw the remains of perhaps 100 bodies now largely oyergrown by bush. At another site bones and decomposing bodies were profusely scattered over an area of at least an acre. There might have been the remains of 1000 bodies there. I was told there were another eight such sites around Kapeka.

In Mpigi district, I saw another three dumping grounds. Near Matuga village, 30 bodies had recently been executed by panga (machete) and near Sanga many skulls and bones were visible in the tall elephant grass on two sites, one of which covered about an acre. Close by I found an old couple who had been gunned down and their home ransacked.

The worst killing grounds are supposedly close to the field headquarters of U.N.L.A. units. Besides Kapeka, the most notorious of these places are Masulita and Kakiri in Mpigi district; Luwero and Kakogi in Luwero district; and Kiboga in Mubende district. Kaaya’s farm, 48 miles from Kampala on the Bombo road, is reputed to have 3000 bodies but may now have been bulldozed.

Calculations can give a rough guide. In 1979, there were 1,600,000 people in Luwero, Mpigi, and Mubende. Large portions of these districts are now virtually empty. One guerrilla estimate is that in the Luwero triangle, a third of the population is in hiding, a third is dead, and a third has moved away. Museveni himself says: “We estimate 300,000 people have died throughout Uganda since 1981. People have died in Masaka, Mbarara and West Nile although there has been no war there.” The United States Committee for Human Rights figure of 100,000 to 200,000 now seems plausible. Museveni is assumed by the West to be fighting to establish a Marxist State. “I have never said Uganda should be run as a socialist or communist country,” he maintains. He believes in a mixed economy based on production by peasants and the middle classes. He says he is not hostile to foreign interests and says: “What I quarrel with is terms.”