| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Subsaharan |
| Uganda police beat up, arrest opposition leader Besigye |
| 2011-04-29 |
| [The Nation (Nairobi)] Ugandan police on Thursday tossed in the slammer opposition leader Kizza Besigye for the fourth time this month, after smashing his car windows and spraying him with tear gas. Besigye, who was released from a week in jug after being granted bail on Wednesday, had attempted another "walk to work" demonstration to protest against rising food and fuel prices. He was blocked from walking by the police however and eventually drove from his home on the outskirts of Kampala into the city centre. "I was not even allowed to get to a public road," Besigye told news hounds. A crowd of several hundred supporters formed around his vehicle when he claimed he was prevented by the police from driving to the bank. The standoff was broken when plain-clothed police smashed his car windows with a hammer and sprayed Besigye with tear gas, forcing the opposition leader and his bodyguards out of the vehicle. Police argued Besigye was blocking the road. "He was inciting violence, blocking the road and disobeying coppers," Kampala metropolitan police commander Grace Turyagumanawe told AFP. "He was moving with many people who were riotous. We asked him to go one way but he refused. The force used was just proportionate not more," Turyagumanawe said. Besigye, 55, was then bundled into the back of a pick-up truck by coppers and at least three other members of his entourage were also whisked away. It was not immediately clear where they were taken to. The event sparked stone-throwing from the crowd to which police responded with tear gas, eventually dispersing the demonstrators. Food and fuel prices have soared in the eastern African country recently, with President Yoweri Museveni blaming inflation on meteorological and global economic factors, but protestors see it as a result of bad governance. |
| Posted by:Fred |