By Albert
Rudatsimburwa
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On Saturday,
September 28, 2019, Uganda’s state-owned newspaper The New Vision wrote a
fictitious report under a front-page headline: “Besigye, Kagame meet in
USA!”
But no such meeting took place, even
“accidentally”, as Museveni claims when he meets Rwandan dissidents.
According to a reliable source familiar
with President Kagame’s schedule during his trip to the United States, there
was no meeting between Kagame and Besigye.
And so one is left wondering what Ugandan
authorities are up to when they resort to such blatantly made up
fabrications.
All we can suppose is that the
embarrassment of being caught having meetings with dissidents of Kayumba
Nyamwasa’s Rwanda
National Congress (RNC) and FDLR in Kampala must be driving
them into manufacturing these kinds of bizarre disinformation pieces.
The pattern of Uganda’s defenses against
the fully substantiated charges Rwanda has placed before them has been to manufacture
out of full cloth some kind of equivalence, which itself has been a revelation
that in fact, Uganda has no tangible grievance against Rwanda in the current
crisis in bilateral relations.
Authorities in Kampala had obviously
calculated that Rwanda would retaliate against Uganda's hounding of Rwandans in
Uganda by also harassing Ugandans in Rwanda. However, none of this ever
happened.
As hundreds of Rwandans get rounded up in
illegal sweeps, tortured and dumped on our common border without the slightest
pretence of adherence to legality, not a single Ugandan has been victimised in
Rwanda.
The authorities had also hoped that the
frequent visits of top RNC officials in Uganda - Eugene-Richard Gasana,
Charlotte Mukankusi, Ben Rutabana, Frank Ntwali, Sande Charles etc., and even
the hosting of the organization’s business arm under the ownership of Tribert
Ayabatwa Rujugiro whom Museveni has similarly admitted to having met on
numerous occasions - would trigger retaliation from Rwanda to recruit and support.
Rwanda would, in fact, identify groups
hostile to Uganda however, Rwanda resisted such a temptation, even though
retaliating in the same currency would have been fully justified.
Rwanda has avoided all these provocations.
Consequently, the authorities in Uganda
have been embarrassed by what is clearly overt, unprovoked malign behaviour
towards a neighbour and fellow member of the East African Community and the
African Union, both of whose treaties, like the United Nations Charter, mandate
peaceful co-existence among member states and non-interference in each other's
internal affairs.
The same applies to efforts to tie the
opposition in Uganda to the leadership in Rwanda; the urge to make up meetings
that never took place.
What Uganda’s authorities neglect to
consider is that even if President Kagame were to meet with Besigye, no
equivalence with Museveni meeting with anti-Rwanda dissidents of armed terror
groups would be justified.
Besigye is a legitimate opposition figure
in Uganda, belongs to a registered political party in that country, and has run
in elections against Museveni multiple times.
Moreover, Besigye is not a criminal running
from the law nor is he a terrorist. Indeed, Besigye lives in Uganda and has no
rebel group that seeks to destabilize and overthrow Museveni.
Museveni is free to meet with legitimate
opposition figures inside Rwanda.
In fact, Rwanda’s opposition is also in
government because Rwanda’s power-sharing constitution mandates it.
This means that in many of the summits that
Museveni attends, there are Rwandan opposition members present there, such as
the current Minister of State for the East African Community in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Amb Olivier Nduhungirehe. Many
others have been at the same venue as Museveni.
So, When Museveni decides to “accidentally”
meet RNC dissidents, he knows he is not meeting Rwanda’s opposition, but
members of groups dedicated to destabilizing the government of a neighbouring
country through violent means. President Kagame has, however, not found it
necessary to do so, Perhaps he will consider meeting Uganda's opposition in
future.
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