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Uganda’s prime opposition chief stated on Thursday that he was seized on the airport and put underneath home arrest following his return from overseas, a declare the authorities denied regardless of a historical past of crackdowns by the East African nation’s autocratic chief in opposition to his prime challenger.
The opposition determine, Bobi Wine, stated males he didn’t know had grabbed him after he disembarked from his flight at Entebbe Worldwide Airport. They twisted his arms behind his again, he stated, and he was whisked into a close-by automotive, sandwiched between two males with weapons and pushed off.
Afterward, he was transferred to a van the place, he stated, a number of troopers sat on him and kicked his head with their boots. Mr. Wine was then pushed to his residence within the capital, Kampala, the place he stated dozens of safety officers had been already stationed inside and out of doors the compound.
“I’m alive, however I’m underneath home arrest,” Mr. Wine stated in a cellphone interview on Thursday afternoon.
Uganda’s police drive denied that he had been arrested, saying that it had “efficiently escorted” Mr. Wine to his residence, the place he was with household and associates. “Disregard rumors of his arrest by propagandists,” the police drive said in a statement on X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter.
Mr. Wine, who was returning to Uganda after a two-week journey overseas, stated safety forces had crushed the gatekeeper and gardener at his residence, squeezing his genitals. The guard was taken to the hospital for remedy, he stated.
He additionally stated that 300 of his supporters, in addition to two dozen authorities officers from the opposition, together with journalists masking his return, had been arrested within the capital and elsewhere. These figures couldn’t instantly be confirmed.
Mr. Wine stated safety forces had fired tear gasoline and reside bullets to disperse supporters close to his residence. After turning on the digicam on his cellphone, he pointed to a monitor from out of doors cameras that confirmed safety forces patrolling the streets round his residence, in addition to a number of police patrol pickup vans and jail vans.
“I’m surrounded by the army, and no one is allowed to go away and nobody is allowed to come back,” he stated.
Safety forces additionally sealed off the workplaces of Mr. Wine’s occasion and barred folks from getting into or leaving, in accordance with the occasion’s secretary normal, David Lewis Rubongoya.
“The degrees of worry are unimaginable,” Mr. Rubongoya said in a post on X.
Mr. Wine, whose actual title is Robert Kyagulanyi, rose lately to turn out to be the largest challenger to the decades-long tenure of President Yoweri Museveni. A key Western ally, Mr. Museveni has ruled the landlocked nation with an iron grip since 1986, muzzling the press, jailing dissidents and successful six phrases in workplace by elections marred by allegations of fraud and rigging.
Mr. Wine’s lawyer, Bruce Afran, condemned the authorities’ actions on Thursday, saying they had been “designed to intrude with the essential proper of Ugandans to have interaction in political exercise, and to dam the opposition chief from assembly with the folks of his nation.”
Mr. Wine’s declare of mistreatment comes because the Ugandan authorities faces widespread condemnation for enacting one of many world’s most punitive anti-gay legal guidelines. The USA and the European Union have condemned the regulation, and the World Financial institution has halted any new funding to the nation.
Mr. Wine’s journey took him to Canada, the US and South Africa. Moreover holding political rallies along with his supporters overseas, he additionally attended screenings of a brand new documentary referred to as “Bobi Wine: The Individuals’s President.”
“They’re punishing me for the movie,” Mr. Wine stated when requested why he thought the federal government had positioned him underneath home arrest. “They’re punishing me for exposing them.”
On Thursday night, Mr. Wine stated that he was at residence along with his spouse, the activist Barbie Kyagulanyi, and that his household had been left in disarray.
He stated he had been trying ahead to taking his 15-year-old daughter out for a birthday dinner. His 8-year-old daughter was feeling “traumatized” and confused, he stated. And his 13-year-old son was stranded at a roadblock and unable to get residence from faculty.
“He’s caught,” he stated. “I now have to barter to permit my son to come back again residence.”
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