Earlier this week, Bobi Wine, party president of the National Unity Platform party, called on the media to draw more attention to recent killings in Karamoja.
KAMPALA | NOW THEN DIGITAL — Bobi Wine, alias Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, the president of the National Unity Platform, has urged journalists to shed more light on the recent killings in Karamoja.
This followed a set of pictures making rounds on different social media of Ugandans who were murdered in cold blood in the region.
According to Kyagulanyi, who published the images on his social media handle, the images are disheartening, noting that many Ugandans are being murdered in cold blood but there is little effort to address the problem.
Kyagulanyi wrote in a statement published on his social media account that the images are very disheartening, and said that very many Ugandans are being murdered in cold blood, despite the fact that few steps are being taken to reverse the trend.
“The people of Karamoja have been asking very critical questions and getting very few answers from the authorities. In many instances, people within the region have accused security forces of shooting unarmed civilians, but there has been no attempt to investigate these allegations to a conclusion,” Bobi Wine said.
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“I call upon the media to shine a light on what is happening in Karamoja. The people of Karamoja need to feel that the rest of the nation stands with them and that we all understand their pain and suffering.”
Noting further, the National Unity Platform president also called on the general public to stand in solidarity to condemn the senseless killings in the region.
“In the strongest terms possible, we condemn these massacres and demand that an end is put to these senseless killings. I call upon all of us to stand in solidarity with these brothers and sisters who live in extreme fear,” he added.
This comes at a time when security forces last week recovered five dead bodies in Moroto District belonging to three geologists attached to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development and two Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers who were attacked by suspected cattle rustlers in the Karamoja sub-region.
The geologists including one intern from Makerere University identified as Edna Musiime was killed alongside two UPDF officers who had accompanied them as they were conducting mineral mapping in the area.
Other victims were Richard Kiggwwe, the lead geologist and his colleague, Charles Olweny. They had been assigned to pick soil samples from Lokisilei village in Lotisan Sub County in Moroto District when they were suddenly attacked about 40 kilometres away from Moroto town.
Speaking about the incident last week, Brig Joseph Balikudembe, the UPDF 3rd division commander said the group was caught unaware and killed by suspected rustlers.
Balikudembe mentioned that the group had hired a translator to accompany along but his words fell on deaf ears as the rustlers continuously fired at them.
He said the translator, however, managed to escape.
“The translator managed to flee to his safety but the geologists being new on the ground had no option but to accept to be killed in cold blood,” Balikudembe explained.
