Son of former president Idi Amin Dada, Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin hopes to seek the audience of American president Donald Trump or better still, get increased international attention to the protest over detention and torture of legislators.
In a Facebook post, Mr. Hussein addresses the issues of brutality and the misuse of American manufactured anti-terror weapons by Ugandan security officers.
Dear President Donald J. Trump.
This picture, taken this morning in downtown Kampala, Uganda, shows what an American military M4 assault rifle is being used for.
The same rifle was said to have been used in the cold-blooded assassination of a senior police officer Felix Kaweesi more than a year ago. You might have already been informed of the volatile situation that has been unfolding in Uganda since August 15th 2018. I personally had to take cover today as live bullets were fired the whole morning around the capital, with multiple rounds barely 50 meters from me by armed camouflaged men in a police pickup truck. I also had to whisk some students to cover indoors so as to avoid any deaths or injury by any stray bullets.
If my memory is correct, wasn’t this M4 semi-automatic rifle originally “donated” to Uganda Special Forces Command (SFC) for anti-terrorism purposes?
Yet here it is being used as military means to silence innocent and unarmed young Ugandan civilians in a depressed country that is protesting the arrest, detention and torture of its political leaders. Particularly the young Honourable Robert Bobi Kyagulanyi who has been jailed virtually incommunicado for almost a week now in an obscure military facility awaiting trial in a military court on possibly trumped-up charges.
It is my understanding that the use of US weapons are bound by an agreement that dictates the circumstances under which they can be used, and by who. It is therefore disturbing to see that on one hand, your U.S. Embassy Kampala issued a statement last week claiming to be concerned about the oppressed people of Uganda in this unfolding crisis, yet on the other hand, the US is supplying the oppressor with all the latest tools of reppression.
The voice of the people is the voice of God.