OPEN LETTER TO
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA ON YOUR VISIT TO KENYA – JULY 24th 2015
FROM THE YOUTH OF
UGANDA
Dear Mr. President,
We, the youth of Uganda, have always
shared solidarity with your presidency. We are honored to share with you our
utmost feelings about how we live and survive in our country Uganda.
We the youth, form the biggest
fraction of the population. Our brothers, sisters, parents and families cannot
afford to have a decent education. We cannot afford medical treatment, a good
meal. Our schools have been sold off, to be replaced with hotels. Our family
members have been evicted and their land forcefully stolen. We do not have
hospitals. AIDs is killing us.
We cannot enjoy our freedoms. Our
rights are violated. The regime in power harbours the most heinous and sinister
motives of denying Ugandan citizens their constitutional rights, while quashing
any possibility of people power and will meant to rescue the country from
bad-governance and dictatorship.
The
regime in power has destroyed our generation. Our only hope is within us and
helpers such as civil society and Non-Government Organizations. As we talk now the
regime keeps on to forcefully close operations of NGOs. These NGOs give us food
in refugee camps. They pay for our tuition. They pay for orphan’s school dues. They
gives us clean water. They gives us clothing, housing and drugs. They do what
the regime in power has failed to do for us for years. Now, we have no say. The
regime shuts down any NGO that questions wide-spread corruption, cronyism,
repression and other anti-constitutional vices which now lie at the very core
of its misrule.
Mr. President, our leaders are
harassed, arrested, imprisoned, shot dead. The regime in power continues to
unleash its indefensible actions of arresting our national leaders and senior
citizens. In just a period of one month, Gen. Sejusa David, Dr. Kizza Besigye, Rt.
Hon. Amama Mbabazi, Hon. Nambooze (MP), and many others. They have been
arrested, denied a right to express own opinion, harassed and clobbered. We are
denied our rights of free speech and association. The regime agents torture us.
They do not want us to associate with fellow peers or allow us to gather for a
common cause. They have draconian laws, we can’t keep on accepting.
The regime is continuously unleashing
and ordering its brutal repressive machine to terrorize us and entire nation.
Fellow youth leaders and activist are intimidated, arrested, imprisoned. It’s
now proved beyond doubt that Mr. Museveni (current Ugandan president) is not a
democrat, but rather a heartless power-hungry dictator, who will do anything to
hang to power, including the application of the most ruthless and authoritarian
methods and approaches as we are witnessing today in Uganda.
In Uganda today, there is no freedom
of expression, no press and media freedom, no right of assembly, no right to
protest peacefully against government malpractices and illegalities, no right
to hold corrupt or errant leaders and public officials to account, no right to
choose political leaders freely in free and fair elections, no right to freely
and without undue harassment offer oneself for the country's top leadership,
etc, etc... The list is long and inexhaustible.
Mr.
President, our brothers and sisters do not have jobs. Millions of youth are
suffering. The regime does not care. We are desperate for our lives. Our
generation is being destroyed deliberately, through use of tribalism,
sectarianism, corruption. There are million cries of people irrespective of
status, gender. Even service men are suffering. There million cries of service
men (army, police and security officers). The regime does not care. They die
for nothing is unjustified wars. Their bodies rot. They are our brothers and
sisters but cannot bury them. Their pension is nowhere to be seen. It’s very
clear that the regime does not care about the welfare of citizens. Our neighbor
(Kenya and Tanzania) are far beyond.
We had hoped that the oil
in our country would be last hope as a national resource. We hoped the revenues
from oil, would help construct schools and get a better education. We hoped to
get new hospitals, jobs, have good families. We hoped the oil would be a
national pride. To our dismay, Uganda’s oil is a personal property. We were
reminded by the head of the regime, that ‘THAT IS MY OIL’.
Mr.
President, Our hope now is in you and your great nation, the United States of
America, and other countries like Britain, and others in the European Union and
the wider international community, should begin to work closely with the
Ugandan people to dismantle the dictatorial regime, that is horrendous -
incorrigibly a monstrous one-man rule that has brought an entire nation of
millions to the precipice, destruction.
We
request you to take our appeal to loving men and women in your great nation.
Let them listen to us. Let them give us a hand. Let them join us in our
struggle to rescue our country Uganda from the dictatorial trinity of the
father, the son and the mother.
We
request you for hand. Understand our situation, like you understand other
people’s. Base on your country’s experience of overcoming slavery, bad
governance, dictatorships in Africa and beyond and redeem us. Advise us. Support
us. Do not let us down. Lift our spirits from slumber.
We
hope you come to our rescue Mr. President.
Yours
faithfully,
Uganda
Youth Platform
Email: uypnews@gmail.com
FOR GOD AND OUR COUNTRY
