The president of Uganda issued a warning to demonstrators that they would continue with their planned anti-corruption march on Tuesday, stating they were “playing with fire”.
In a broadcast speech late on Saturday, President Yoweri Museveni stated, “Some elements have been planning illegal demonstrations, riots.”
Since 1986, Museveni has dominated the nation of East Africa with an iron grip.Without providing more details, he said that “elements working for foreign interests” were among the protestors.
Due to intelligence that “some elements were trying to take advantage of the demonstration to cause chaos in the country,” Ugandan police had notified organizers earlier on Saturday that they would not be allowing the scheduled protest in the country’s capital, Kampala.
Director of Ugandan Police Operations Frank Mwesigwa told AFP that demonstrations “can only be allowed under our mandate as long as they are not causing public disorder and disrupting lives of lawful citizens.”
The protest organizers promised to continue the march in spite of this, according to AFP.
“We don’t require police authorization to conduct a nonviolent protest,” Louez Aloikin Opolose, a prominent protest organizer, declared on Saturday. “It is our constitutional right.”
The demonstrators want to pass the parliament, which they claim is complicit in corruption, by marching past it.
“Our starting point in the fight against corruption is parliament… and the demonstration is on irrespective of what police is saying,” Shamim Nambasa, a demonstrator, said.
Uganda is ranked low on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions ranking. Uganda is ranked 141st out of 180 countries, with the least corrupt nations having the highest ranking.
For over a month, the anti-corruption demonstrators have been monitoring the occasionally lethal protests that have rocked neighboring Kenya.
Disgruntled campaigners in Kenya sought action against corruption and alleged police brutality as part of a broader anti-government campaign that started as nonviolent demonstrations against contentious tax rises.
Since the protests started on June 18, at least 50 people have died and 413 have been injured, according to the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
