admin | February 22, 2016
At least one person was killed last week in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, when police clashed with opposition supporters after detaining presidential candidate Kizza Besigye.
Several people were also wounded as police fired bullets and tear gas, while opposition supporters hurled rocks and erected street barricades in the capital.
The outbreak of violence came just days before the February 18 presidential and parliamentary elections.
President Yoweri Museveni won a fifth term in office. Opposition chief Mr. Besigye claims poll fraud. Museveni is denying the allegations, saying, “Anybody who is trying to challenge the results of this election must not be serious.”
Twenty-three-year-old Brenda in Kampala, who declined to give her second name out of concern for her security, says, “We are disappointed; the election has been rigged. I have never seen another president and it seems it will be like that until he dies.”
Opposition supporter James Magara says, “There is no democracy in Uganda, and now the whole world will see it.”
For more on this, please go to: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/uganda-opposition-leader-arrested-days-elections-160215132155444.html, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uganda-election-idUSKCN0VT08A and http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/uganda-elections-besigye-held-march-planned-160222065601088.html
Photo: Students demonstrating at Makerere University in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. Credit: Tendai Marima/Al Jazeera