March 2012
AIP Ariongs blood is on the hands of the NRM government!
Saturday, March 24, 2012 at 10:00pm 路
Nina Dear,
I can see you are very interested in he recent death of AIP Ariong and have made numerous calls for the “civil society” to condemn his death and his “murderers”!
We do need to be clear on who or what exactly civil society is.
Civil society is you and I, not every brief case organisation that calls itself thus.
Some of these are simply taking advantage of the bumbling incompetence of the NRM and the gullibility of cash rich “donors”!
The death of Ariong should be condemned. The police in a functioning society are just like any other service personnel who wake up each morning to put their lives on the line for the community! As a person Ariong should not have died. Whoever killed him should be considered to have murdered a father and husband and have their day before the courts.
Unfortunately the government is almost certainly going to use this as a political opportunity to settle scores and misuse the law for punitive purposes rather than justice!
While we are on the subject of Ariong, the visit of the president to his home highlights a very important point. That police just like many Ugandans are victims of the incompetence of this government. That Ariong lived with his 8 children and a wife in the conditions depicted in that photo should remind the public of the plight of the police! It should also remind the police that demonstrators and protestors are many times activists for causes that would improve the lives of the police themselves.
It is important to make the point that the police itself, specifically its conduct toward members of the public who it has dubbed rioters regardless of whether they are actually rioting or trying to disperse in chaos in order to get away from tear gas and police brutality is at the root of and a major part of this problem.
Since 2009 in the so called Buganda riots during which many people were killed and some remain in prison without trial, the police have behaved with remorseless brutality. They have labelled the people they are paid to protect and deliberately brutalised them. Everyone needs to look at the videos of the police beating up and teargassing everyone within the vicinity of any sort of protest or gathering to get an understanding of how big this problem is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLE9-yF3f7g&feature=youtu.be
In any other country given this recent history there would have been a commission of inquiry by now!
All those overpaid MP’s should be calling for a commission of inquiry and inviting Kayihura and the Minister for internal affairs as well as the minister for Defence as well as victims and their families to testify. The way the police deals with the public specifically public gatherings needs to be reformed before this whole thing blows up into a fullscale war.
The recent Trayvon murder case in America is one that Ugandans should pay attention to. Ultimately the police commissioner was forced to resign following an outcry from the community after the police decided not to charge the killer of a young man citing archaic laws in a case of double standards based on race. Ugandans should be calling for the resignation of Kayihura who has really mishandled the police force, turned it into a politicised organisation and and enemy that treats the public its paid to protect like enemies! If there was ever any doubt that a soldier is not equipped or trained for policing Kayihura has demonstrated it!
The response of the government from the president to the PM and below as usual is arrogance and defiance. Being violent men who came to power through the barrel of the gun, they seem to think that everything can be solved through the barrel of the gun.
Museveni claims he has learnt governance though trial and error over 26 years in power but it is obvious he is very slow learner for he has learnt nothing!
In so much as these public gatherings have been mismanaged by the police and the government from the very beginning, the police and the government are responsible for AIP Ariongs death as well as all those other people you conveniently forget to mention who have been killed and brutalised by the police.
This was going to happen -it was only a matter of time. And if an inquiry into police methods culture and training is not done now, more deaths including those of police officers will happen until you have a more radicalised population ready to have all out war with the police rather than lie back and be raped and sodomised at whim by force that is hostile to the people it is supposed to be protecting!
I hear you guys are arresting people left right and centre -talk about slow learners! If you keep doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result, I cannot think of what else to call you but slow! It is time to change tactics!
May AIP Ariong rest in peace and his death serve as an opportunity to save more lives of Ugandan! While the person who threw that stone should be prosecuted, ultimately, AIP Ariongs blood is on the hands of Kayihura, and the NRm government!