Is the UN Interfering With Democracy in Uganda?

"(T)he people of Uganda and the international community would like to know how long the United Nations has had this information and why it was not disclosed until this crucial pre-election time..."

Via e-mail came this copy of a letter sent to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:

We would like to draw your attention to a matter of grave concern to the national security of Uganda and to the personal rights and freedoms of Dr. Kizza Besigye, the President of the Forum for Democratic Change. On November 9th 2005, Ugandans were shocked by the utterance of grave statements attributed to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for the DR Congo, Mr. William Lacy Swing.

1. Using rumors of the PRA to undermine the democratic process in Uganda. At a press conference that he addressed jointly with the President of the Republic of Uganda, Mr. Swing is reported to have stated that: “We have always recognized the presence of many Ugandan rebel groups like the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) and PRA (People’s Redemption Army) is there. I cannot give their numbers at the moment, but they are part of an estimated 2,000 Ugandan rebels”.

In the same report published in a Ugandan national newspaper, The Monitor, dated November 10th 2005, it was revealed that: ‘an internal briefing on foreign armed groups in DRC by MONUC dated September 6, copies of which Daily Monitor has seen, the UN force puts the strength of PRA between 300-400 men. It says the PRA operates between Mahagi and Kpandroma and that the force has “moved to Berunda and has now joined ADF/NALU in North Kivu.” The Monuc document also states that PRA has links with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) but adds, “There is no significant evidence that the PRA represents any significant threat to Uganda’s stability”. Monuc documents also name Besigye as the “political leader of the PRA”. It also says Besigye is “ known for his business ingenuity”.

While the report does not reveal the source of the UN internal briefing, this revelation coming at a time when Mr. Swing addressed a press conference in Uganda, as part of the United Nations Security Council visit to Uganda, gives the impression that the United Nations may be partial and potentially interfering in the elections of a sovereign state contrary to international laws and the UN’s own established traditions.

Given the grave consequences of the statements made by Mr. Swing, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and the people of Uganda have a right to know the position of the Secretary General on a number of critical issues.

Specifically, the people of Uganda would like to know the strength, location, leadership, and financiers of the PRA, if in fact such a group does exist. In addition, the people of Uganda and the international community would like to know how long the United Nations has had this information and why it was not disclosed until this crucial pre-election time, and finally whether the Secretary General affirms the statement of his envoy as being factually accurate and empirically tenable.

Your Excellency, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that a member state of the United Nations, namely the United Kingdom, is on record for publicly stating that based on their investigations and intelligence the PRA rebel group does not exist or represent any significant threat to the security of Uganda.

The British Foreign Minister Chris Mullin stated the following in the House of Commons in March 2005: “The Ugandan Government have alleged that the People's Redemption Army (PRA) is an armed group which has been attempting to establish a network in north-western Uganda. We have seen no evidence of this or that the PRA represents any significant threat to Uganda's stability.” See House of Commons Hansard, March 9, 2005 (Column 1896W). How then does the United Nations reconcile its statement with the position of the United Kingdom?

We assume that the Secretary General is aware that rumors of the existence of the PRA have been made a central issue by the Ugandan government as a means of persecuting political opponents and the rumors have intensified ahead of the upcoming presidential election campaigns. Government security agents have used the rumors to arrest, illegally detain, incarcerate, torture, and murder political opponents, some of whom are still languishing in jails without trial three years after their arrest. Accordingly, we believe that the UN envoy Mr. Swing, had full knowledge of the gravity of his statement and could not have made it in a casual and perfunctory manner.

2. UN continued indifference to gross human rights violations by Government of Uganda. There have been a series of reports by the UN and international human rights organizations exposing human rights violations by the government of Uganda in the Great Lakes Region as it pursued military adventure and illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo, including full-scale battles inside the territory of DRC. These wars, which were very costly to both Ugandans and Congolese, were never sanctioned by the people of Uganda through Parliament as required by our national Constitution and therefore violated both national and international laws.

The Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (UN Security Council Document No. S/2002/1146 dated 16th October 2002) states:

“The objective of the elite network in the areas controlled by Uganda has been to exercise monopolistic control over the area’s principal natural resources, cross-border trade, and tax revenues for the purpose of enriching members of the network…The Uganda network consists of a core group of members including certain high-ranking UPDF officers, private businessmen and selected rebel leaders/administrators. UPDF Lieutenant General (Ret.) Salim Saleh and Major General James Kazini are the key figures. Other members include the Chief of Military Intelligence, Colonel Noble Mayombo, UPDF Colonel Kahinda Otafiire and Colonel Peter Karim. UPDF (Uganda’s military) operations have contributed to the arming of large numbers. UPDF have trained the militia of their Ituri commercial allies, the Hema, and provoked the need for the victims of Hema attacks to defend themselves.”

Furthermore, in a Security Council Report S/2005/30 of 25th January, 2005, a panel of Experts reported to the UN Security Council that in violation of a UN arms embargo, “the Group gathered credible information indicating that Uganda had provided State-authorized arms transfers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that their troops had been directly involved in supporting dissident forces.”

In spite of these indictments by the UN’s own experts, the organization is not on record for publicly condemning the government of Uganda for these criminal activities and human rights violations in which over three million people have lost their lives. In northern Uganda, for example, the United Nations reports that 1,000 people die each week in camps for internally displaced people where over 1.6 million Ugandans have been herded by the Uganda government, and have lived in these deplorable camps for 10 years. It is surprising and puzzling, therefore, that the UN would focus attention instead on a shadowy organization which only the Uganda government claims to exist.

3. The people of Uganda deserve to know the basis of UN’s position on the PRA. The people of Uganda deserve to know the basis on which the United Nations is making these grave allegations and conclusions about the PRA. We therefore request the following: (1.) The official UN documents referred to in the report, which contain vital information on the PRA including its numerical strength, its goals and objectives, its leadership and financiers. (2.) The official UN findings on the existence of the PRA.

In addition, we are deeply concerned that UN documents have formed the basis of slanderous statements about a leader of a major Ugandan political party, Dr. Kizza Besigye, namely “Monuc documents also name Besigye as the “political leader of the PRA”. It also says Besigye is “known for his business ingenuity.” Accordingly, we request that the statement be immediately retracted by the UN and the envoy be publicly reprimanded by the UN.

We also request that the highest authority in the UN should make a statement clarifying the matter of PRA and its leadership to the people of Uganda.

Your Excellency, given the gravity of this development for the people of the Great Lakes Region, we will consider pursuing legal action to rectify the injury caused by the utterances of your envoy and we urge you to address the concerns raised in this correspondence at the earliest possible opportunity. We have copied this correspondence to major regional and international stakeholders and members of the media.

Yours very sincerely,

Anne Mugisha
Special Envoy, Office of the President
Forum for Democratic Change
Uganda