Besigye condemns house arrest, vows to challenge Museveni

Ugandan opposition leader, Kizza Besigye has condemned his month-long detention in a video posted on his Youtube channel and warned that the struggle would continue.

Clad in a black T-shirt with the inscription “I Can’t Breathe,” the veteran Ugandan opposition leader said his “illegal” detention by the Ugandan police has been “extremely stressful.”

Besigye was placed under house arrest on February 18 after having been arrested a few times before and during the presidential election.

In the video titled “32 days: My life in illegal detention,” the opposition leader said the detention is a “complete blatant violation of one’s rights. It’s very annoying and disabling” as it has prevented him from engaging in other activities.

He was particularly unhappy that “we couldn’t assemble as we had wanted, all the evidence as quickly as we needed to regarding the election and the scandalous announcement by the Electoral Commission of somebody who had not won an election.”

With our campaign coordinator, Mr Darius Tweyambe & wife. Just released without charge after 11days in Kireka cells! pic.twitter.com/wohik8rnAL

— Kifefe Kizza-Besigye (@kizzabesigye1) March 17, 2016

Besigye’s house arrest made it impossible for him to beat the deadline to file an application to contest the results of the February 18 polls. Former Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi who also contested the election however managed to meet the deadline.

“It’s been very very frustrating that we’ve been sitting here seeing the injustice continue and get perpetuated,” he added.

The former army doctor who is no stranger to political intimidation said in the video that he was now “prepared psychologically for any situation.”

He also reported a marked improvement in the number of visitors he is allowed to see. He explained that previously, he was not allowed many visitors and the few who were allowed in were tortured.

“We have an application in the Kasangati court which was supposed to be heard today (March 23). I’ve just been informed by our lawyers that the matter has now been postponed to tomorrow because the government side asked for more time to respond to the application,” he said of his legal battle against his continued detention.

“We have also filed an application in the High Court of Uganda which again is intended to seek an enforcement of our right, my right. The hearing of that particular suit has not been fixed but we hope that it will also be fixed soon and in that particular suit of course we are seeking the reliefs to do with the violation of rights but also compensation and damages to be paid by those who are perpetuating these crimes,” Besigye said.

Uganda’s Electoral Commission declared President Yoweri Museveni winner of the February 18 poll with 61 percent of the votes and gave Besigye, leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) 35.61 percent of the votes.

Although the FDC leader was not able to file a legal challenge against the results, he assured his supporters in the video that “the struggle continues.”

“As we have already told all our supporters, we won the election. We are determined to enforce the mandate that was given to us by our people. We have demanded for an audit of the election which we believe will confirm our victory which if they do not cooperate, we will go ahead and seek to enforce using and relying on our supporters to support processes that will now be aiming at serving them as mandated” he said.

Kizza Besigye vowed to challenge “the illegitimate government that Mr. Museveni would be trying to form out of this election. So the struggle will definitely continue until the people of Uganda get what they want and led the way they decide and by a person they decide, we are not turning back, the struggle must continue.”

Watch the video posted by Kizza Besigye below .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }