By Elias Biryabarema
KAMPALA (Reuters) -Soldiers and police sealed off the headquarters of Uganda’s biggest opposition party on Monday in what a police spokesperson called a precautionary move ahead of anti-government protests planned for Tuesday despite a ban.
In posts on social media platform X, National Unity Platform party chief Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, said security personnel had surrounded NUP headquarters in the capital Kampala, barring anyone from entering or exiting.
Wine said several NUP leaders had been “violently arrested” and also showed pictures of military personnel at the premises alongside parked army trucks.
“The military and police have raided and surrounded the National Unity Platform offices …” he said. “The cowardly regime is so afraid of the people because they know how much they have wronged them!”
Police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke did not immediately respond when sought for comment about the reported arrests.
Wine, 42, a pop star turned politician, has in recent years emerged as the biggest challenger to veteran President Yoweri Museveni, 79, who has led the East African nation since 1986.
Ugandan youth who have spearheaded recent protests are planning to march to parliament on Tuesday in defiance of a ban on the demonstration, which is intended to denounce alleged widespread corruption and human rights abuses under Museveni’s long-time rule.
Wine said his party was not organising Tuesday’s protests, but it supported them.
Rusoke said security forces had taken precautionary steps against what he called NUP “mobilisation for the protest”.
“We have been monitoring (this). Their activities raised a red flag and we took precaution measures,” he said.
Protests are constitutionally legal in Uganda but organisers must secure permits in advance from police, which are only rarely granted.
Opposition leaders and rights activists say embezzlement and misuse of government funds are widespread in Uganda and have long accused Museveni of failing to prosecute corrupt top-level officials who are politically loyal or related to him.
Museveni has repeatedly denied tolerating corruption and says whenever there is sufficient evidence, culprits are prosecuted, for example lawmakers and even ministers.
Museveni on Monday directed the Criminal Investigations Directorate “to arrest and prosecute all government officials linked to ghost civil servants on the payroll,” his government announced on X.
In a speech on Saturday, he warned Ugandan youth against the planned protests, alleging they were sponsored by foreigners.
“Some elements, some of them from the opposition, are always working with the foreigners to foment chaos in Uganda – riots, illegal demonstrations, illegal and inconsiderate processions, etc. These people … should check themselves or we shall have no alternative but to check them,” he said.
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by George Obulutsa, William Maclean and Mark Heinrich)
