As it emerged that the International Criminal Court had dispatched a team to monitor the political situation in Uganda, the police last week changed tactics to deflect the focus away from brutality in the ongoing Walk to Work campaign. 

Instead of the one-dimensional violence in which scores of opposition politicians, women and children were shot, roughed up and teargassed, the police last Thurday sent out mixed messages.

They arrested Kizza Besigye and Norbert Mao in Kampala (incarcerating the two in Nakasongola, 113 km north of the capital) but let Olara Otunnu, the Uganda People’s Congress president, walk to his party headquarters on Kampala road; several legislators were also escorted from their residences to parliament, although the police continued to fire teargas to disperse crowds in the city centre.  

It is understood that the sudden switch from brutality has been triggered by two things: One, Otunnu has kept to a consistent line in which he alleges that the Uganda People’s Defence Forces carried out their share of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 20-year war in northern Uganda, for which five commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army were indicted by the ICC in 2005.  

During the review conference of the Rome Statute that created the Court, Otunnu met ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo at the Commonwealth Resort Munyonyo and asked the prosecutor to investigate the UPDF’s culpability for northern Uganda war crimes. Ocampo said that the Ugandan file is “still open” to new evidence.   

In a recent conversation with Ocampo, the UPC chief alluded to this and the current brutality of “a military force dressed in police uniform.” 

Two, President Yoweri Museveni, angry at his Cabinet — he recently berated his ministers for failure to do such a simple job as explaining the causes of the price hikes that triggered the latest protests — gave directives to security agencies, Internal Affairs Minister Kirunda Kivejinja and police chief Maj-Gen Kale Kayihura not to risk any further image damage by unleashing terror on women and children in schools and hospitals as well as opposition politicians in the full glare of local and international media. 

“They are here. They are watching this. Don’t forget that the ICC has never closed the northern Uganda file. And now this is happening; Museveni is still being watched,” our source said.  

When asked if the ICC had moved in, the Court’s field outreach co-ordinator Maria Kamara would neither confirm nor deny it, but instead said that the situation in Uganda is “an issue that is now public and before the international community,” adding that the Prosecutor has the latitude to move in anytime provided that human-rights organisations, observers and even ordinary Ugandans give sufficient grounds for an intervention. 

“Ultimately, we will not tell you that ICC will or will not intervene. This is an issue that is public. ICC can monitor the situation, but this will not necessarily trigger an investigation. Let me state that we have received many other calls for investigation but we do not always end up doing so. The Prosecutor has to assess the situation and have the judges determine if there is reasonable basis… We’ve not come to any conclusion in Uganda,” she said.  

While addressing journalists recently, Maj-Gen Kayihura stated that he was not afraid of the ICC, which he said had become a bogeyman that the opposition cite whenever their protests are crushed.

In his view, it is the opposition politicians who could end up being investigated for inciting violence. 

Kenya’s 2007/08 post-election political chaos bred the now famous “Ocampo Six”— government officials, politicians and a journalist hauled before The Hague based Court for masterminding post election violence.

While the Kenya scenario is different from the ongoing situation in Uganda, it remains a wake-up call that once there is a pattern to impunity by government officials and no political will to stop it, the ICC is on hand to move in.

By isolating the campaign’s top leaders Besigye and Mao, UPC vice president Joseph Bossa said the police were now trying to reinvent colonial-era tactics of incarcerating and deporting political leaders to remote areas of the country to nip protests in the bud.

The Walk to Work campaign was crafted by pressure group Action for Change (A4C) and even though he did not take part in its authoring, there is no doubt that Besigye has become the face of this campaign.

Now there are questions as to whether it can survive without the fiery retired colonel.

In an interview with The EastAfrican, Mr Bossa said that his imprisonment would not cripple the campaign.  

“We believe that this struggle is bigger than the leaders; this is a walk by Ugandans, for Ugandans; it’s a social movement that goes on regardless of the leaders. Taking Besigye to Nakasongola just like the colonialists used to, means nothing. The colonialists tried it, but did not stop other Ugandans from emerging. If Besigye or Otunnu don’t walk, walking will not end tomorrow.”  

Nevertheless, the opposition appeared caught off guard by the police’s change of approach to handling the protests, which started on Monday, April 11.

By letting Otunnu and other politicians walk to work minus violent clashes with police on Thursday, the opposition may have been disarmed of its weapon to force the hand of the security machinery, whose signature response is violence. 

But is also evident after just a fortnight of the protests, fatigue has quickly set in some quarters, diluting momentum of what had become a serious headache for the government and police.

As the politicians walked, some market vendors around the Kampala suburbs shouted at them to “take this nonsense elsewhere,” adding, “We are tired. We want to work without being teargassed.”

On Thursday last week, Besigye was arrested near the city centre and charged with “holding an unlawful assembly” before being denied bail.

He was remanded by Nabweru Court magistrate Justine Atukwasa till April 27, when his bail application will be heard again. 

As government puts its act together to explain the fuel price hikes as being a global phenomenon not confined to Uganda, the opposition now plan other issues around which to rally.

This way, they will defeat the fatigue that is associated with price protests.