Fellow Ugandans, It was nice to read that Church House on the main Kampala road has been renamed "St. Janan Luwum House" by the Anglican Church. In exercising our right to respond to the story, particularly on the serious accusation of murder, we would first like to have it on public record that together with Mapeera House and the National Mosque in Old Kampala, these three premises were part of the Indian properties nationalized by a nationalist and pan-Africanist President Idi Amin who then selflessly and patriotically redistributed them to Ugandans from all faiths and all tribes including the three main faiths, the Anglican Church, the Protestant Church and the Muslim Supreme Council respectively. Clearly these properties have never been returned to their original Indian owners as the Ugandan people and the international community are made to believe. However today's young Ugandans can now quietly discover that the new Church House premises (now St Janan Luwum House) were once generously donated to the Church by Amin more than four decades ago. At the time, his government also contributed generously to building the Pope Paul Memorial center, Rubaga in memory of the Holy Father's first visit to Uganda several years earlier (1969). I personally was present as President Amin lay the now disappeared foundation stone and cut the ribbon. In a few weeks from now it will be St Janan Luwum day. On February 16th 1977, an officer called Sgt. Moses Okello hailing from Acholi, was driving a vehicle with three occupants from the famous Nile Mansions hotel, a world class hotel and international conference complex built by President Amin in 1975. Okello had been told to take the three passengers to their homes and bring them back for a meeting with Amin the next morning. About an hour after they left, President Amin received the sad phone call that an incident had happened and all the three occupants were dead. What happened? President Idi Amin first inquired with his security chief then personally visited Moses Okello who had a fractured leg plus other injuries, and was being treated at Mulago hospital under police guard. Amin interrogated Moses Okello, and asked the officer how the three persons died. The sergeant explained that as he drove them to their homes as ordered after the Nile Gardens public inquiry, they attempted to strangle him, probably with the intention of escaping with the vehicle. In the scuffle, they got into a head-on collision with another on-coming vehicle. This was at the junction between the now Sheraton hotel (service entrance) and Kampala club. His assailants were Erinayo Oryema, Janan Luwum and Oboth Ofumbi. It is reported that he then pulled out his service weapon and shot his assailants, otherwise it was him who was being strangled to death. For decades Sgt. Moses Okello lived quietly in Torit, South Sudan. He then moved to the capital Juba where he lives today. It is quite concerning that nobody ever thought to interview him about the incident. Most media have preferred discussing the "Fake News" by Henry Kyemba and another opportunist called Lawoko. People who were nowhere near the security services, neither were they in the vehicle. In fact Mr. Lawoko was working in Radio Uganda that day as director dispatching his journalists to cover the Nile hotel public hearing, but then writes a book claiming he was imprisoned in the "dungeons of Nakasero". His own colleagues have reported this fact on record. Possibly he feared to be seen as someone who had worked in the Amin government because the subsequent Tanzanian led regimes might have summarily killed him. Therefore he wrote a book claiming to be "an Amin victim". Many other people have played victims with similar lies and crocodile tears so as to survive the wrath of the Tanzanians and their deadly Ugandan exile cronies who went on a bloody rampage after the 1979 war. The ensuing chaos included multiple successive coups, looting, war crimes, and genocide for an entire decade where a million Ugandans are estimated to have died. On 16th February 1977, the real last person to see the three assailants alive was Moses Okello. He is the one who reportedly shot them.There are claims that he might have done so deliberately for other purposes, including that he could have been a double agent who also served Obote's political tribalism interests to discredit the Amin government. I have persisted in asking for a forensic investigation of the shots fired. Especially at the time when the reburial was being organized a year ago. But in 1977, the Amin government investigation failed to find any evidence that disproved Moses Okello's statement, and to this day there is no evidence that disputes Okello's self-defense claim. To the best of my knowledge, the only other independent inquiry that took place was by the World Council of Churches (1984?). They have since locked-up their final report. But what I would genuinely like to see is that Radio Uganda and Uganda television bring out the entire video and audio recordings of the public hearing that took place at Nile gardens. President Amin ordered a live broadcast for transparency purposes so that the Ugandan people and the international community witness exactly who and what was being organized against the country. It was a case where the accused had been caught red-handed with trucks of Italian made weapons. But that is another issue altogether. Personally I would like to see the Anglican Church (and journalists) meeting Mr. Moses Okello himself face-to-face. For four decades, many opportunists have been benefiting from royalties accrued from best-selling books. They have been on global TV interviews and enjoyed public fame from the events of 16th February 1977. All without giving a single coin to the bereaved families. President Idi Amin had decided to discuss the treason case with the deceased. He had chosen dialogue, leniency and diplomacy because the case involved top public personalities, two of whom were senior officials from his own government. They were found to be in advanced stages of plans to create insecurity with a multitude of weapons, and thereby disrupt the fragile harmony that existed within the country at the time. Other rebel groups leaders have since confessed they were also deliberately involved in "covert operations". This simply means creating havoc, and a climate of fear. The only way that is done is to engage in terror activities that instill fear in the population. Surprisingly they never fought the military or the police but for 8 years went mainly for soft targets, civilian officials and the elite within Uganda. The truck that I saw in February 1977 had a poorly painted Pepsi logo with weapons hidden under a false floor. It was at Rubaga Cathedral when we passed by to see the find. That is what caused the late Janan Luwum's arrest. It appears the aim was to create political, economic, and social instability in the entire country. If out of a 38 year fear of the liberators the older generation of Ugandans has failed to speak truth since 1979, todays young generation deserves the true facts about what exactly happened on that day. On the sidelines of this national history, it was interesting to read Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, who is a co-chair for the Luwum day organizing Commitee, stating how "the overthrow of Amin acted as a stabilizing factor for Uganda". He probably must have forgotten that after the Amin government, the so-called liberation created multiple wars, consecutive genocides, and mass war crimes against humanity across the whole country for almost two decades, with the skeletons of Luweero, the Mukura massacre, the Mbarara Massacre, the Ombachi massacre, and the Northern war being the most prominent still visible features. An estimated 2 million Ugandans have died in conflict since the famous liberation of 1979. That is without counting the staggering 6 million Congolese killed, tortured, raped, or maimed during the infamous invasions of their country by Uganda. This is the exact same number as the Jews that were exterminated by Hitler during World War II. It is also closing in on the 10 million Congolese killed by King Leopold II of Belgium during colonialism. Impoverished Ugandans now owe $10 billion dollars to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the plunder of the mineral-rich neighboring African country. Meanwhile I hear Ugandans discussing the mysterious death of personalities like the late Andrew Kayiira who was shot by suspected government assailants while at a purported friends home. The reasons are unclear but it is widely claimed to have been a politically motivated extra-judicial killing. Incidentally today both the co-chairmen of the Luwum day organizing committee have been active members in the regimes and counter-regimes that thrived in the post-Amin era that saw the total collapse of both the state and the economy, plus the resulting untold human cost to the country. They called it liberation. Yet the period immediately after President Amin is on record as the worst ever in Ugandan history, where not a single new infrastructure or public service was introduced until the late 90's, almost 20 years of nothing but fighting, looting, mismanagement, stolen elections, gross human rights abuses, corruption and tribalism as the order of the day. Uganda's lowest Gross National Income (GNI) per capita on record was around $240 dollars per person per year in 1983. That is less than a dollar a day per Ugandan that each citizen had to live on to raise their family with, including education and healthcare. Maybe Mr. Olara Otunnu and Ndugu Rugunda require that I produce the NRA's ten point program that depicts the kind of "fascist" governance as is stated there-in. One that was rampant during the 5-year Luweero bush war where the so-called "Liberators" fought viciously amongst themselves after taking over from Amin? Mr. Otunnu might recall how the regime he served ordered the infamous "Panda gari" operation during that time where scores of innocent civilians suspected to be NRA sympathizers were ruthlessly collected by UNLA soldiers around Uganda never to be seen again. 500,000 people died in Luweero alone. I never saw anything like that ever happen on civilians during the Amin government. He loved the people and never deployed the army against them even once. The sight of Mr. Olara Otunnu.being free, alive and well, yet he was an official in the criminal 1980's regimes is quite peculiar. Here he is now also working as Co-chair of the organizing committee for Luwum day. He has also been the president of a party whose youth wing notoriously slaughtered populations in areas that were deemed rebel strongholds during the afore-mentioned 5-year bush war. How such an entity (his political party) is still facilitated to function publicly after inflicting so much pain and propagating so much hate as official policy and ideology, is an issue that probably explains best the impunity levels going around. It surely waters down the organizing committees vow to uphold "values held by the late Archbishop Janan Luwum". Mind you Ambassador Otunnu once feigned his own death by writing to the international media that a brilliant Makerere University student named Olara Otunnu has been brutally murdered by a savage Amin. Mr. Otunnu had an American friend the late Mr. Cyril Boyles Jr. whose Ugandan widow still runs their tour agency in Kampala. Cyril sadly passed away in Kampala in Jan. 2015. A black American teacher brought to Uganda by Amin to help in the education sector and who in 1975 first designed the famous Amin T-shirts with a picture of President Amin being carried by British Ugandans. Cyril was shocked to find Otunnu alive in New York city months after the disturbing press reports of Otunnu's death at the hands of Amin. The American almost fled for dear life in fear of possibly having met an Olara Otunnu ghost. Upon inquiring what happened, Cyril was saddened to see Otunnu smile sheepishly without any clear honest response. Many people have similarly made careers and livelihoods out of lies and tarnishing Amin's name. In the course of the last 40 years we the Amin family have had the most fictitious falsehoods, ridicule and mockery leveled against us. Politicians just getting up and insulting us in public. But our silence has been persistent. So I felt maybe we should issue a public response that could help provide some truthful perspective on the history of this country without conveniently overlooking some incredibly callous chapters that the concerned parties probably feel uncomfortable discussing, and thereby prefer that we all keep focusing on Amin. But to end on a more positive note, We sincerely wish the Anglican Church good luck in the new building. We also hope that the organizing committee is sensitive to what could be termed as discrimination. Three people were caught in the same turmoil. Killed by the same Moses Okello at the same time, on the same day. But only one gets a national day named after him, and the same person now gets a building named after him as well. What the Oryema and Oboth Ofumbi families must be feeling can be understood by any considerate person. My maternal Grandfather the late Archdeacon Silas Adroa used to tell me how the Church must always be the first to stand with the poor and the marginalized. I believe the late Janan Luwum could have had similar values in the course of his religious work. I once proposed that we consider having one national day for all those countless downtrodden, including prominent people, who have lost their lives in our modern history since independence. However the idea has not been looked into seriously as a conciliatory necessity for this country. I am not sure but maybe some people prefer that certain enmities/conflict continue. Which is quite a shortsighted perspective given that we now almost all agree to vouch for development and growth as Janan Luwum House is a good testimony to. Lastly we hope that the co-chairpersons of the organizing committee will be open to inviting the Amin family to say a few words to the congregation during the St Janan Luwum Day celebrations on February 16th 2017.
Thank You and God Bless. Daily Monitor story: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Church-House-renamed-Janani-Luwum/688334-3780872-6kb540/index.html _______________________________________________ WestNileNet mailing list WestNileNet@kym.net http://orion.kym.net/mailman/listinfo/westnilenet WestNileNet is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. _______________________________________________
