(Corrects cause of 2011 protests in par 2)
* Besigye has been arrested several times since 2011
violence
* Security crackdown tarnished veteran president’s image
By Elias Biryabarema
KAMPALA, July 22 (Reuters) – Police arrested Uganda’s
leading opposition figure on Monday saying he was about to stage
illegal rallies, in what will be seen as the latest crackdown on
dissent in the oil-rich African country.
Kizza Besigye has been detained several times since he
championed opposition demonstrations over high fuel and food
prices that rocked parts of the capital and other cities in
2011.
A security crackdown on those protests left at least nine
people dead and tarnished the image of veteran President Yoweri
Museveni.
Opposition activists last week said they were planning more
rallies against what they saw as unfair taxes on piped water and
kerosene.
“The law allows us to carry out preventive arrest,” deputy
police spokesman Patrick Onyango told Reuters.
“We had information that Besigye was leaving his home to
commit crimes by staging illegal assemblies and we arrested
him,” he added.
One of Besigye’s aides, Francis Mwijukye, told Reuters the
opposition leader had been taken to a prison in Mukono district,
about 40 km (25 miles) east of the capital Kampala.
“They’re scared that holding him in Kampala is dangerous
because his supporters would come to demand his release. So they
abducted him and brought him to a rural area,” he said.
Museveni won local and international praise in the years
after he took power in 1986 for stabilising the country and
spurring growth in.
The prospects of Uganda, east Africa’s third largest
economy, looked brighter still when explorers struck oil in
2006. Uganda said in January it was aiming to start commercial
output of oil by 2016 at the earliest.
But the president has faced mounting criticism for what
opponents say is an increasingly authoritarian style.
Besigye, a one-time ally of Museveni, has traditionally
drawn most of his support from urban centres while Museveni has
broadly remained popular among the rural masses.
(Editing by George Obulutsa and Andrew Heavens)
