Security forces defend the state and protect citizens, not governments

Museveni was absolutely right when he stated in 1993 that “The army [security forces] should be just for guarding the borders [defending the state] and maintaining internal peace [law and order]… That is all… They should guard what the people want, not do what the people don’t want. I do not agree with military governments… I do not think the army has a role in government… The people are the sovereign force”(Africa Report July/August 1993).

Nobody can disagree with this statement. The problem is that Museveni practices what he does not preach. He does the opposite of what he says most of the time! And he has been doing this for the last twenty five years. The people of Uganda are now fed up because he has consistently and deliberately done what the people do not want – using security forces to violate their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

When someone treats you like a slave you have got to defend yourself

According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary a slave is, inter alia, (1) a bond servant divested of all freedom and personal rights; a human being who is owned by and wholly subject to the will of another, as by capture, purchase, or birth. (2) one who has lost the power of resistance, or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever… (3) …one who labors like a slave.

A number of developments with reference to the Great Lakes Region (especially Rwanda and south west Uganda) have forced me to revisit the issue of being a slave. First, my visit to Burundi, DRC and Rwanda in January/February 2010 and the detailed stories I heard in formal and informal settings in addition to information from other sources has made me realize that groups of human beings in the region have been deprived of their human rights. Reports about massacres or should we say genocide of Hutu people in Rwanda and Eastern DRC committed by Tutsi, the hidden mass graves of brutally murdered Hutu people some of them under buildings in Rwanda and DRC, the comments from people who should know better but think Hutu people – all Hutu people – are barbaric, wild beasts, genocidaires and assassins that deserve to be punished made me wonder where the world is headed.