The reported Gulu ‘attack’ on June 12, 2016 and claim of an attempted ‘rescue’ of a person in detention is all too familiar. We have been here before and it all was made up then as it quite possibly could be now.
On September 16, 2002, a group of UPDF officers stormed Gulu Central Prison at about 3.00am, in the dark of the night on the pretext that suspects who had been remanded to Gulu Central prison were just about to be rescued by LRA rebel forces. They forcefully entered the prison and at point blank range, shot and killed Peter Oloya, then popularly known as Yumbe.
Those familiar with Gulu town will tell you that the central prison is in the heart of Gulu Municipality on the Gulu-Lacor Road. It is opposite the Kaunda Grounds, a popular ground for public functions. Pope John Paul II was hosted here and several of Museveni’s rallies have been held at the grounds.
Assuming the claim of a rescue plot were true, would not the logical thing have been to provide security for the central prison and deal with the matter in the light of day? But in times such as that, logic eludes us all.
Curiously though, the spokesperson of the 4th Division army barracks in Gulu town then was Col. Paddy Ankunda. Paddy and the officer who commanded the prison raid and extra-judicial killing of Peter Oloya (Yumbe), the then Lt. Col. Charles Otema Awany, have all since been promoted. Paddy is now a Lt. Col, the Army and Defence Spokesperson and Otema, a one star General (Brigadier) and the Army Chief of Logistics.
The gristly and senseless act in Gulu prison found its way to the High Court, thanks to Hon. Reagan Okumu, Hon. Okello Okello Livingston and their indefatigable attorney, Peter Walubiri. In a High Court decision, Retired Justice Augustine Kania, in a ruling delivered on February 12, 2003 held inter alia; that ‘…Lt. Col. Otema Awany… swore no affidavits in reply leading to an irresistible inference that the averments that Peter Oloya was deliberately shot in cold blood at the orders of Lt. Col. Otema Awany are true.’
The judge went on to hold that ‘ Peter Oloya was intentionally deprived of his right to life when he was shot in cold-blood at the orders of Lt. Col. Otema Awany… this was a blatant case of extra-judicial killings…’
An attempt by the Attorney General Chambers to appeal the High Court decision was dismissed with cost on June 8, 2006. The High Court judgement ordering the commander of the 4th Division to release the body of the killed Yumbe for burial has not been honoured to date. Yumbe is buried in a secret grave only his killers know. The other orders for compensation to the other 22 prisoners who suffered other forms of abuse also remains unpaid.
And yet 14 years later, the same script is playing out – accusations of a rescue of an incarcerated individual, exchange of gunfire in the night and possibly several violations of rights, all in Gulu town.
The people of Gulu were at the epicentre of a two decade blood letting in Northern Uganda by both the LRA and government forces. The reported attack and gun shots no doubt reawaken past memories. It peels the scars on the slowly healing wounds of brutality.
Dan Oola Odiya, now in the middle of these murky and unsubstantiated allegations has been a resident of Gulu town since then. He is reportedly related to the spouses (concubines) of one of the powerful army men in Gulu town.
Dan is known to many as a principled UPC member who forewent the allures of grandeur for the comfort of integrity. He together with Hon. Jacob Oulanya, now NRM stalwart who swears that Museven is his hero, Peter Mayiga, the reported Ugandan Ambassador to China who has not been to Beijing since his conversion to the NRM, and the late Badru Wegulo, also an NRM convert in his last days, all tried to recruit me as a young boy into the UPC youth activism.
Fred Denis Okema, the former MUK Guild President and strong UPC stalwart was among my contemporaries in Gulu town. We were primary school boys then. We held meetings at Pece Stadium and at Ladit Okeny’s house in senior quarters. They never asked us to join any violence but only sold the UPC ideals. Of the lot, only Dan Oola Odiya stayed the course, remained UPC and spoke UPC. The others, their stories all too familiar to retell.
One can only pray that he (Dan Oola Odiya) does not meet Peter Oloya’s fate. He is a good man, a principled man who knew not the ways of violence. He was deeply convicted and hauntingly convincing in his arguments.
For the sake of the orphaned and surviving children of Gulu and Northern Uganda, I pray that the Gulu 2016 attack will not turn out to be 2002 allover again. The survivors of the Yumbe killings were forced to take amnesties and now live as former rebels whereas not. Their dignity squeezed out of them through the hands of the tortuous agents of the rulers whose reward is not a day in court but a place on the pipping podium upon their promotion.
This article was originally posted on the writers’ Facebook timeline
