By Betty Aol Ocan
On behalf of all the forces of Change in Uganda, I congratulate Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi upon the recognition at the International Human Rights Ceremony in Chicago. The award is a representation of every individual in this Nation who has stood up to the violent claws of the dictatorship of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
The award is a representation of the pivotal role that the youth have got to play in the Liberation of this Nation. The Opposition leadership is humbled by the International Community’s recognition for the demand for increased civic space and fair Democracy in Uganda.
We are at a time when the incarceration of Dr. Stella Nyanzi brings to light the true fangs of a dictatorship that thrives in the suffocation of free speech, the Rights to Expression, and Women’s Rights. The Museveni regime is caught between the rock and the deep blue sea. Being militaristic in administration and Operations, it faces a double-edged sword from the mostly educated women elite whose muzzle is the pen and the bullet is ink.
Times have evolved, the youthful Population is more conscious of its needs and more resilient women-led, non-violent activism has emerged across the world, the most recent inspired by Alaa Salah of Sudan. Dr. Stella Nyanzi is a proof of the State’s hypocrisy on Women’s Health and Rights, and it undermines the doctrine of affirmative action in as far as creating a wider space for women participation in mainstream politics is concerned.
Dr. Stella is a prisoner of ink, she tears through the core fabric of the State’s brute, she antagonises the status quo and without a single gunshot, threatens a bloodless regime change, something the Establishment is unwelcome to dictatorships across the world are more afraid of an educated and empowered mass than they would lose sleep over a gun-revolution.
The regime never knows how to go about it, they are broken in the most humiliating and amorphous manner they’d never anticipate, and the most distressing of them all, is one which places Women and youth at the Centre of it all.
Rather than suffocate their voices with intimidation and oppression, this category of the Population has proven a thorn into the flesh of the regime, and Dr. Stella Nyanzi represents Hundreds of thousands of Women activities across the world who will shoot at oppression with the muzzle of ink, at the expense of their uteri. A very traumatising and brutal experience from a regime that pretends to promote Women and Children Health rights.
It’s only a matter of time that the entire nakedness of the regime is presented for all to witness. Above all, Humanity must prevail, and the State must account for dead foetus resulting from the Miscarriage of Dr. Stella Nyanzi while in incarceration.
The writer is Woman MP, Gulu District and Leader of Opposition
