By Andrew Mwenda
A USA senator, Jim Risch of Idaho and also chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Senate, is threatening Uganda and calling for sanctions against our CDF. This is more insulting because America has no legal, not to mention moral, authority to make these statements.
Uganda is a much more responsible state in respecting the rights of her citizens than his country. The USA is a country that just recently kidnapped a head of state of a sovereign country without justification under international law; is threatening to invade and annex another county (Greenland) which is a territory of a fellow ally in NATO, and is conducting mass arrests of her own citizens and deporting them on allegations that they are illegal immigrants just because of the color of their skins or the accent in their language.
More than this, the USA with only 4% of the world population has 26% of all prisoners in the world. And although black people form 10% of the USA population, they form 46% of this country’s prison inmates. Basically, the criminal justice system is not one for seeking justice but is used as an instrument of racial domination of black people.
All this is not to mention that a black man is killed by police every 28 hours just because of the color of their skin. How can an apartheid-prison-state like this claim moral authority to comment on Uganda’s internal politics and even threaten sanctions? This is not about human rights and the rule of law. It is about power, raw power.
America is saying that just because they are rich and powerful, they have a right and duty to dictate who governs Uganda and how it is governed. Regarding the threats of sanctions on to CDF, I should say they are very, very welcome.
The same America declared Nelson Mandela a terrorist and the ANC a terrorist organization for fighting apartheid in South Africa. Mandela was removed from the list of America’s terrorists not in 1990, when he was released; not in 1994 when he became president, not in 1998 when he addressed the joint house of congress, but in 2007. The attempt to see a spec in other people’s eyes while having a log in its own has been a practice of USA foreign policy for the last 85 years.
This use and abuse of its power and international institutions and laws was recently well articulated by Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, at the recently concluded Davos meeting. America is threatening to annex Canada, perhaps the reason Carney is speaking out after decades of his country’s silence and complicity in America’s crimes.
My point is simple but fundamental: American interference in our politics is unacceptable, unwelcome and unhelpful. The senator is advised to focus on protecting the rights of his own citizens: native Americans, black and Hispanic people and poor white people.
Please stop diverting attention from the appalling domestic problems in your country by directing your gaze at others. In fact, this constant shift of attention from internal human rights abuses and electoral fraud (which President Trump has talked about often) is the reason America’s decline has become terminal. Please leave us alone as save your own country.
Andrew Mwenda is a veteran journalist and political pundit
