Uganda: Citizens protesting against rising cost of living arrested

Ugandan police announced Monday that they arrested nearly ten of the protesters who were protesting in Jinja, in the southeastern part of the African country, about the rapid increase in the cost of living.

“Eight instigators have been arrested” and “will be prosecuted” today “for inciting violence,” police spokesman James Mooby told AFP.

Protesters set fire to car tires and blocked a busy thoroughfare in Jinja, about 80km east of the capital Kampala, forcing motorists to join them to demand the government subsidize basic food products, witnesses said.

The police “had to use a minimum of force, mainly firing tear gas, to disperse the protesters,” Mr Mubi added.

“Of course we support these kinds of protests. The government has to do something. People are going to bed at night hungry,” Solomon Wadibua, a 28-year-old vendor, told AFP.

Already hit hard by the new coronavirus pandemic, the economy of Uganda, a country of 45 million people, is now being tested by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which is rapidly increasing energy and food prices around the world.

According to the latest official statistics, food inflation reached 13.1% in May on an annual basis.

The price of fuel has doubled since February and in some remote areas of Uganda it has risen even more.

So far, President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, prefers to advise his fellow citizens to live more frugally than to consider cutting taxes or increasing state aid to the most vulnerable, as more and more voices are calling for him.

In June, opposition former presidential candidate Kiza Besitze was arrested and charged with inciting violence for the second time in a month, according to his lawyer, after leading several protests against rising cost of living.

SOURCE: AMPE