Basically, the main opposition to President Museveni, Kizza Besigye, lost in the elections in February again. Everything was peaceful for a while. Then, people started to protest the sudden rise in fuel prices and inflation which has caused food prices to sky-rocket. Basically, on Thursday the 14th, Besigye and other opposition leaders decided to walk to work in order to protest the price of fuel. The police reacted severely, and tried to arrest him. The people rioted and fought back, and some live bullets were fired. Besigye was shot in the hand with a rubber bullet, which made people extremely angry.
The police pulled people out of houses and shot tear gas (an irritating gas used to disperse riots) into people's houses, and into some schools. There were running battles, and several people were injured, including a pregnant woman who was shot in the stomach. This all happened about 10 minutes from my school, so they sent us home early. That was extremely interesting, as our neighbor had to drive me and his kids home. These neighbors are from Utah, and are only here for 6 months. They have never been in riots before, and so I called him from school, told him we needed to leave, got his kids (including one of my good friends) and figured out if we needed to take back roads or plan something else. Unbeknown to us, some of these riots had taken place about a 30 seconds drive from the main gate of the university, so about 2 minutes from our front door.
Besigye promised to continue walking to work every Monday and Thursday.
On Monday everyone thought everything was calm, and around my school it was. However, when my mom showed up at school I could tell something was not right. She pulled out her phone, and showed me a picture of the burning tires she had to drive through to get to my school (the good thing was my dad's driver took her in because they knew there were problems). And this was the back way, while she tried to avoid riots. So, we drove home. The road was still blackened all the way across, and the police were out in full force. It was quite disconcerting. That night, we heard shouting from the house, and people were rioting very close by (about two minutes from my house).
My mom took this picture on her way to pick me up. This was one of the fires on the road, but when we came back through about 100 meters away from this the road was blackened from burning road blocks like this all the way across. My mom luckily avoided those, but she had to go through this one. While it was not on fire anymore, this road was so eerie and charred when we came through.
The Thursday before Easter Besigye walked again. In Masaka, about 2 hours from where we live, people rioted. The police reacted again, and shot live bullets. A two year old was shot while she was playing in the head and the chest. She died pretty much instantly. Besigye was arrested yet again, and held in prison until Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Besigye was allowed bail and set free, as long as he didn't try to walk or cause any riots again. However, yesterday morning he attempted to leave his compound. The police stopped him, but directed him to drive on a certain road as long as he did not wave or make a scene at all. But, the police and others attacked his car. They smashed it, and him and his aides and workers, with sledge-hammers and gun butts. Besigye was drenched in tear gas, and sent to the hospital unable to see. He was fairly severely injured. People protested, but it was not a massive problem. This picture was taken yesterday when Besigye was being arrested
Today, everything kind of fell apart. A rumor circulated on Twitter that Besigye had died, which was not true. People reacted, though. Severe riots broke out everywhere. They were near my school (though thankfully I'm on spring break), right around my friends' houses, and spread all over the place. Basically, people formed road blocks and hit the anti-riot police with rocks. They set huge fires, and everything turned into chaos. We had no idea about this, until around 11 a.m. my dad sent my mom a text. My dad was at a staff retreat in what turned out to be one of the major hots-spots. We continued getting texts from him which said things like "It's a good thing to have microphones so that you can be heard over gun shots and explosions". Needless to say, we were worried.
This picture I actually took from an msnbc article. The armed person is a riot police officer who is shooting pepper spray at Besigye... in his car.
So, these pictures were taken from the BBC article about today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13237058) . It was taken about an hour and a half from where we are...
The riots continued to spread, including in Mukono (the town I live in) . However, they finally quieted down. Everything seems fairly calm now. However, on Monday Besigye will likely walk again, unless he is arrested again since he was too badly injured yesterday. It is probable that riots will break out again, and again. It's not like this is a revolution, but it is chaotic. Part of me wishes that people would just revolt, and get all of this sporadic chaos over with. I know that doesn't make sense, but at least a continual revolution is more predictable than this.
I took this picture from the Monitor website (the Monitor is one of Uganda's two main English newspapers). They have live updates on the riots and information. If you're interested, the link is monitor.co.ug
I'll try to post more often about what's going on. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, waiting for my dad to get back. One more interesting thing: I'm currently on crutches for a badly sprained ankle. I've been on crutches for three weeks now, and I have at least another to go. Isn't that exciting?
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