The second week of April; a week to remember!

April 11th and 14th of 2011 will remain embedded in the history of the Uganda for different reasons to different people. The children of the primary schools in Kasangati who were tear-gassed will definitely remember the week, albeit inaccurately for the terror and pain the police visited on them.

The eighteen year old pregnant lady who was shot in the stomach, God bless her – but survived death will definitely never forget the week that was.

Another lady in Kajjansi was not as lucky, the bullet killed her and the media did not spare her corpse with her intestines oozing out of her, dead she lay on the roadside. Her relatives will remember the second week of April as the fateful one.

Those in the media have probably not seen a worse week for their freedom. Ever since the September 2009 three-day riots in the whole of Central Uganda, media personnel especially Television had probably not seen any more severe direct managing from the infamous Uganda Broadcasting Council than during the second week of April. A report in one of the daily newspapers revealed that live broadcasting of events that were happening on Thursday was banned. In fact, one of the workers on one of the TV stations known for such live broadcasting said on his facebook status that, the fact that the TVs are not broadcasting news about the walk to work protests does not mean nothing is happening.

A lot happened during the week, especially on Thursday and from the direct meddling of the Uganda Broadcasting Council, it seems someone does not want the details of the events of the day to be known. Facebook and twitter were off the hook with on-the-ground reports of the incidents, much of which reports must have been carefully edited out of the conventional media.

A particular intriguing report that was not reported in any conventional media is that of a butcher-man who reportedly be-headed a police officer in Kalerwe. From the several reports on the story, a police officer who was tear-gassing and chasing the butcher-man met his creator as the man turned the sharp machete onto the police-officer’s neck, literally chopping it off from the police officer’s body. It is then said that other police officers shot the man on the spot. For whatever reason, this story has not been told at all by any of the known conventional media outlets. There are many other heart-rending stories that remain untold about Thursday.

In fact, considering the extent of the crackdown on the media, the actual numbers of those who were shot dead by the police and military forces, those injured by the tear-gas, live bullets, rubber bullets, kibokos and other inhuman means employed by the police and military remain unascertained. The numbers of the arrested and detained also remain unknown. Reactions to the protests by the president did not include even a sentence about the dead, injured, arrested and detained.

Our dear president instead reacted to the protests by derogatively referring to one of the protesters, Col. Besigye as an infertile egg. One cabinet minister, Hon. Kirunda Kivenjija had earlier on referred to the protesters as fleas. Of course, we have not forgotten the president’s earlier reference to Besigye as a samosa and cake which he would eat. All these derogatory references coming in the month of April is not only worrying but they bring sad memories of the April 1994 tragedy in Rwanda.

Incidentally, the genocidaires in Rwanda referred to their victims as inyenzi (cockroaches). One of the said justifications for the allied attacks on Gaddafi is that he referred to the rebels as rats and cockroaches. Top government officials in Uganda at the onset of protests against high food and fuel prices are referring to protesters as fleas and eggs.

Does this mean the current regime in Uganda is capable of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against its citizens? To answer this question is not easy at the moment, but can we forget that the military was searching house to house in Bwaise looking for protesters whose houses they were tear-gassing in the process forcing the protesters out, and then the protesters were beaten, arrested, detained and God knows if some have since died of the wounds.