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Uganda Peoples Congress

UGANDA PEOPLES CONGRESS

NATIONAL SECRETARIAT

UGANDA HOUSE

KAMPALA

February 25 2004

Press Statement

  1. UPC has just learnt that 8 people of Acholi tribe were lynched in Lira town. We further have been formally informed that the local civic and religious leaders arranged a peaceful demonstration protesting the mass murder of the displaced people in Camps at Abia and Barlonyo.

  2. The demonstration was authorised by police and a route to be taken was agreed upon between police and the local leaders. The people with their leaders started the demonstration along the agreed route but no sooner had they gone half way the demonstration which was peaceful, a group of other people whom they did not recognise and not in groups with their leaders joined them and took routes outside the agreed one. They attacked the army barracks and soldiers came out. They went to residential places and hunted out some known people of Acholi origin and have so far lynched 8 people by time of this press conference. The trouble provocateurs seem to have had an agenda contrary to organisers of the demonstration.

  3. We strongly condemn the people who have taken law in their own hands and are bent on turning the ugly situation in Northern Uganda into a tribal war between Langi and Acholi. It will be recalled that some time back, some Movement cronies tried to arouse sentiments of Teso and Lango militias to wage war against Acholi. This appears to be the same people who want to divert attention of the country and the world from the tragedy in North occasioned by government failure to offer security to citizens into a tribal conflict so that Museveni poses as a peacemaker between two "primitive" warring tribes.

  4. Museveni is currently camped in Lira and all these are happening at his close range probably with his connivance.

  5. People of Northern and Eastern Uganda are called upon to stop killing each other. They should not lose sight of their enemy. They must remember the adage of 'grasshoppers in container' as they kill each other waiting to be devoured by the one who confined them.

For God and My Country.

Dr. James W. Rwanyarare

Chairman

Presidential Policy Commission