NUP’s Kamaga lashes Out at Gov’t over Pinetti Coffee Deal, Rampant Abductions

Former Luuka North Constituency National Unity Platform (NUP) flag bearer Daniel Kamaga has castigated the ruling Ugandan government for the alleged continued abduction of opposition supporters around the country, similar to disappearances during and after 2021 presidential and general elections.

Kamaga alleged that many of the NUP party supporters have in recent years been picked up and held incommunicado.

Ugandan media has in the recent years been awash with reports of armed men linked to the state security forces kidnapping people and taking them to unknown locations, where they have no access to lawyers or family.

‘’Many other people, mostly opposition supporters, remain missing. Everybody is aware that even the Human Rights Watch published a report documenting years of similar arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, and the use of illegal detention centers by Ugandan security officers. These abuses escalated before the January 2021 general elections and continued. Security forces continue to conduct arbitrary arrests of critics of the government, opposition leaders and supporters, and alleged protesters’’, Kamaga noted.

Kamaga, one of the outspoken leaders in NUP blamed the government for failure to investigate these abuses and hold errant security officers to account which he says has emboldened them to continue.

Recently Information Minister Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, who doubles as the government spokesperson, said: “Police do not abduct, they arrest and not according to political parties, but they trace for criminals.”

Lately, Alex Mufumbiro, the NUP deputy spokesperson, yesterday said “many of our supporters continue to be abducted and taken to different safe houses. [The] government can deny all these, but history will always judge them for their inconsistencies”.

The arrest and holding in secrecy of NUP supporters is not new. In the run-up to, during and after 2021 presidential and general elections, security agencies among them Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence operatives allegedly arrested hundreds of NUP supporters, leading to verbal exchanges in Parliament between the Opposition party and the government.

The government later admitted that law enforcement agencies had taken dozens of the NUP supporters, but downplayed the numbers raised by the Opposition party.

Incarceration of supporters of Bobi Wine began on a low intensity months before the ballot, but dramatically escalated following the November 2020 protests in Kampala and nearby town following the arrest by security forces of Bobi Wine while on a campaign trail in the eastern Luuka District.

Besides the abductions, Kamaga also asked Ugandan leaders to resist the Coffee deal signed between the Government and Ms Enrica Pinetti.

The proposed coffee processing plant will be located within the Kampala Industrial and Business Park, Mukono District.

It will squat on land spanning about 27 acres and will be located near Kyagalanyi Coffee Factory and Steel and Tube Industries, a geotechnical investigations report prepared for the company in 2020, reveals.

On February 2, Uganda officially withdrew from the International Coffee Agreement following a September 2021 notice to do so by Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) boss Emmanuel Iyamulemye Niyibigira.

Pinetti, controversial Italian businesswoman, whose plans to use a government-backed multi-million dollar loan to construct the International Specialized Hospital in Lubowa on Entebbe Road, a project that has stalled for nearly two years, landed on another project which has been queried by many Ugandans.

The company was given free land in the Industrial and Business Park at Namanve measuring 27 acres after it indicated its capability of establishing a coffee processing facility in Kampala. It will be given exclusive rights to buy all Uganda’s coffee and its concession will end in 2032, but subject to renewal.

However ,Kamaga notes that the agreement was in contravention of the Constitution, the National Coffee Act and other laws.