NAIROBI (Reuters) – Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni vowed on Saturday to ‘defeat’ a wave of deadly protests triggered by rising food and fuel prices.
Museveni was fielding questions from members of a Kenyan business club after giving a speech that was briefly interrupted by a man in the audience objecting to this week’s violent crackdown on protestors in Uganda.
Two people were killed and at least 90 injured in the Ugandan capital Kampala on Friday after police fired bullets and teargas at crowds protesting against the arrest of an opposition leader.
“It won’t escalate. We are going to defeat it,” Museveni said, accusing organisers of the protests of plotting to destabilise his government through looting.
“Their plans were to loot. To cause people to loot people’s shops so that they undermine our programme of recovery and development,” he said.
The government will investigate the deaths that occurred during the protests and will arrest police officers found to have acted unlawfully, he added.
Friday’s events followed weeks of protests, which have the potential to unnerve investors in east Africa’s third largest economy, aimed at forcing the government to rein in soaring prices of food and fuel.
At least seven people have been killed during the weeks of protests which have been led by Kizza Besigye, who was defeated by Museveni in a February presidential election.
Television footage showed Besigye being beaten and drenched repeatedly with pepper spray before he was thrown into a police pickup truck on Thursday. He was later released on bail and flew to Kenya for treatment of injuries sustained in the arrest. “Apparently it was actually that opposition leader who first sprayed pepper spray against police officers,” Museveni said. Asked why Besigye was being arrested for walking to work, Museveni, in power since 1986, said the opposition leader must get permission from police first.
“There is no problem for Besigye to walk. Either to walk to work or to walk as an exercise, whatever he wants there is no problem… but we are asking him ‘please inform the police so that you agree with them where you want to walk’,” he said.
