Ahead of election, Uganda's security forces are accused of using violence against the opposition

WAKISO, Uganda (AP) — The Ugandan presidential candidate known as Bobi Wine wears a flak jacket and helmet while campaigning to protect himself from gunfire. But the safety gear offers no protection from the stinging clouds of tear gas that often follow him on the campaign trail.

Wine is challenging President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986 by repeatedly rewriting the rules to stay in power. Term and age limits have been scrapped, rivals jailed or sidelined, and state security forces are a constant presence at opposition rallies as Museveni seeks a seventh term in elections on Jan. 15.

Wine, a musician-turned-politician whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, faced similar setbacks in 2021, when he first ran for president. He was often roughed up by the police, clothes ripped from his body, and dozens of his supporters were jailed.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, he charged that this time “the military has largely taken over the election” and that at least three of his supporters have been killed in violent campaign events.

“It has been very violent. There’s been a lot of impunity to the extent that we are denied the right to use the public roads,” he said. “We are hounded by security and followed by over 40 police and military cars. Everywhere I go to campaign, (the) day before, the military comes, beats up people, intimidates them, warns them against attending the rallies I address.”

The human rights group Amnesty International says the use of tear gas, pepper spray, beatings and other acts of violence amount to “a brutal campaign of repression” ahead of the vote.

The president is urging tear gas, not bullets

In a New Year's Eve address, the president said he recommended that the security forces use more tear gas to break up crowds of what he called “the criminal opposition."

“Using tear gas for rioters is both legal and non-lethal,” Museveni said in a televised speech. “It doesn’t kill. It is much better than using live bullets.”

Security forces, notably the military, have repeatedly broken up Wine's campaign rallies, sending his supporters scampering into ditches and swamps.

Critics note that Museveni, in contrast, campaigns without disruption and can go wherever he wants. Some charge that the election is simply a ritual to keep Museveni in power, not a fair exercise that could possibly lead to a change of government in the east African nation of 45 million.

Wine, the most prominent of seven opposition candidates, has urged supporters to show courage before the security forces, although he has not called outright for protests. He said he wants his supporters to cast “protest votes” in large numbers against Museveni's party on election day.

In his interview with the AP, Wine cited at least three deaths at his rallies, including a man shot by the military and another run over by a military truck. The offenses can go unpunished because the electoral authorities, the police and the army “serve the sitting government,” he said. Police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke said he was not aware of the alleged incidents.

The president's son hopes to take power one day

Museveni is the third-longest-serving leader in Africa. Now he seeks to extend his rule into a fifth decade.

He first took power by force as the leader of a guerrilla army that said it wanted to restore democracy after a period of civil war and the cruel dictatorship of Idi Amin.

Decades ago, Museveni criticized African leaders who overstayed their time in power. Years later, Ugandan lawmakers did the same thing for him when they jettisoned the last constitutional obstacle — age limits — for a possible life presidency.

His son, army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has asserted his wish to succeed his father, raising fears of hereditary rule as Museveni has no recognizable successor in the upper ranks of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement.

Museveni has been elected six times, nearly all of those polls marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging. He has since fallen out with many of the comrades who fought alongside him, including some who say he betrayed the ideals of their bush-war struggle. One of them is Kizza Besigye, once Museveni’s personal doctor, who has been jailed for over a year and repeatedly denied bail after facing treason charges.

Besigye was Uganda’s most prominent opposition leader before the rise of Wine, 43, who presents a different challenge for Museveni as the face of youthful hope for change. Wine has a large following among working-class people in urban areas, and his party has the most seats of any opposition party in Parliament.

In the 2021 election, Wine secured 35% of the vote, while Museveni, with 58%, posted his worst-ever result, establishing Wine as a serious challenger for power.

Yet Museveni dismisses Wine as an agent of foreign interests and questions his patriotism. “Mr. Kyagulanyi and his evil foreigners that back him fail to understand that Uganda is a land of spiritual and political martyrs,” Museveni said in his New Year’s Eve address.

Civic leaders have also been targeted

Sarah Bireete, a government critic who runs the non-governmental group Center for Constitutional Governance, was arrested last week and criminally charged over allegations she unlawfully shared data related to the national voters' registry. The charges are yet to be substantiated.

A magistrate remanded her to jail until Jan. 21, a decision that drew condemnation from some civic leaders as politically motivated because it silenced Bireete's work as a commentator ahead of voting.

Before her arrest, Bireete had told the AP that Museveni’s Uganda was “a military dictatorship," not a democracy.

“The evidence is out for everyone to see that indeed Uganda can no longer claim to be a constitutional democracy,” she said.

Uganda has not witnessed a peaceful transfer of presidential power since independence from colonial rule six decades ago. That raises the stakes as an aging Museveni increasingly depends on a security apparatus helmed by his son, Gen. Kainerugaba.

Kainerugaba has warned force could be used against Wine, including threatening to behead him in one of several tweets widely condemned as reckless a year ago.

Museveni "can’t credibly claim to oppose repressive tactics that his own administration has employed for years,” said Gerald Bareebe, a Ugandan who is an associate professor of politics at Canada's York University, speaking of Museveni's advice to the security forces.

Bareebe pointed out that some within Museveni's party think the security forces have gone too far. Even they “are outraged by the brutal tactics employed by the police and military against innocent civilians,” he said.

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Video journalist Patrick Onen in Kampala, Uganda, contributed to this report.