The president of Uganda issued a warning to protestors that they would continue with their planned anti-corruption march on Tuesday, stating they were “playing with fire.”
“Some elements have been planning illegal demonstrations, riots,” President Yoweri Museveni said in a televised address late Saturday.
Museveni has ruled the East African country with an iron fist since 1986.
He said the protesters included “elements working for foreign interests”, without elaborating.
Earlier Saturday, Ugandan police had informed organisers it would not permit the planned protest in the capital Kampala as authorities had intelligence that “some elements were trying to take advantage of the demonstration to cause chaos in the country”.
“Demonstrations can only be allowed under our mandate as long as they are not causing public disorder and disrupting lives of lawful citizens,” Ugandan police operations director Frank Mwesigwa told AFP.
The protest organisers told AFP they vowed to press on with the demonstration regardless.
“We don’t need police permission to carry out a peaceful demonstration,” one of the main protest leaders, Louez Aloikin Opolose, said Saturday. “It is our constitutional right.”
The protesters hope to take the march past parliament, which they accuse of tolerating corruption.
“Our starting point in the fight against corruption is parliament… and the demonstration is on irrespective of what police is saying,” protester Shamim Nambasa said.
Uganda is ranked low on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions ranking. Uganda is ranked 141st out of 180 countries, with the least corrupt nations having the highest ranking.
For over a month, the anti-corruption demonstrators have been monitoring the occasionally lethal protests that have rocked neighboring Kenya.
Disgruntled campaigners in Kenya sought action against corruption and alleged police brutality as part of a broader anti-government campaign that started as nonviolent demonstrations against contentious tax rises.
Since the protests started on June 18, at least 50 people have died and 413 have been injured, according to the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.