UGANDA-REFUGEES: Fear Keeps Exiles Away

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 1 1996 (IPS) - Once described as the Pearl of Africa by Winston Churchill, Uganda has been recovering over the past few years from one and a half decades of dictatorship.

According to various human rights groups, at least one million people were killed between 1971 and 1985, under dictators Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

Yoweri Museveni seized power at the head of a rebel army in 1986 and since then, the East African nation has been enjoying its first extended period of relative peace since 1971 although there is a localised bush war in the north, stomping ground of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rag-tag rebel group.

But some Ugandan exiles here say their entire country is still unsafe and a Nairobi-based group has called on Museveni to make it possible for refugees to return home and take part in general elections scheduled for June.

“We have many Ugandans in Kenya, Sudan, Zaire, the United Kingdom, America, Canada, Sweden, India and Japan who want to come home and participate in the elections,” says Ali Etindi Katwela, chairman of the Nairobi-based Uganda Refugees Resistance Party (URRP).

Katwela, who claims his party represents Ugandan refugees worldwide, told journalists here this week that most Ugandans abroad could not return home because of harassment by Museveni’s security forces.

Whether the claim is true or not, the credibility of the organisation that has made it is debatable. The URRP includes many officials of previous Ugandan regimes, including its secretary, Abdul Eli Simbwa, who served in the army of notorious dictator Idi Amin.

But Simbwa takes pains to show his concern for all Ugandans, both at home and abroad. “Our aim is to encourage Ugandans wherever they are to return home,” he said this week. “We are opposed to civil wars because war doesn’t solve any problem. It only increases the suffering of our people.”

Simbwa said Museveni should negotiate a settlement to resolve the conflict in the north, adding: “As long as Museveni has refugees outside, he will never enjoy peace or rest”.

“We feel that Ugandans should only go out as expatriates not as refugees. Among Ugandan refugees many are well qualified persons who can contribute to the development of their country,” said Simbwa, urging countries hosting refugees from Uganda to back the URRP’s campaign.

Despite the URRP’s claims, there are signs that other Ugandans feel the country is safe enough to live in. Thousands of Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin in 1972 have been returning home to reclaim their businesses and property.

A source in the Uganda High Commission here told IPS Thursday that prominent refugees who had benefited from an amnesty offered by Museveni in 1987 had gone back to Uganda, including head of state Gen. Tito Okelo, whom Museveni overthrew in 1986 and Otema Alimadi, prime minister under Obote.

“If a head of state, a prime minister or ministers can return home, who are these small people?” the source said. “These are the people who don’t want to go home because of the atrocities they have committed against their people. They have more problems with their own people than they claim to have with the government.”

The largest number of Ugandan refugees are in Sudan, nearly 100,000, according to estimates by the UNHCR office in Khartoum. There are also many in Zaire.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) here puts the figure of registered Ugandan refugees in Kenya at about 6,000. “Our latest figure shows that about 1,000 have been repatriated to Uganda recently,” said a UNHCR spokeswoman.

Not all want to go back. One refugee who gave his name as Mark Kagwa said while he welcomed the URRP’s campaign, the question of returning home was a matter which individuals had to decide.

“We are contributing to Uganda’s economy indirectly,” he said in justification of his decision to live and work in Kenya. “Every month we remit home money to our families and relations which strengthens Uganda’s economy.”

“If these guys want to go home and participate in the elections, let them go ahead,” Kagwa said. “After all Museveni has offered amnesty to Ugandans living in exile. And many people are returning home.”

However, URRP’s Katwela claimed that some exiles “have been put off by the idea of a no-party elections.”

Arguing that political pluralism will not help his country but only divide it along ethnic lines, Museveni has refused to legalise political parties. Last year Uganda’s parliament suspended multi-partyism for another five years.

However, members of the banned parties, including the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), which used to be headed by Obote before he went into exile in Zambia, are contesting the June parliamentary and presidential polls as individuals.

Western nations have felt duty bound to call on Museveni to allow political parties to operate, but appear sympathetic to his argument that that could lead to ethnic division and are contributing 20 million dollars towards the elections.

While the URRP claims that alleged harassment by the security police is preventing Ugandans from returning home to vote in the elections, diplomats in Kampala feel the biggest threat to voters is the LRA.

They have said that while the LRA — said to be backed by Sudan — poses no direct military threat to Museveni, it is capable of disrupting the elections in the north of the country.