How Africa News
The United States ambassador to Uganda was blocked by Ugandan security forces from visiting presidential candidate Bobi Wine on Monday.
This afternoon, the US Ambassador to Uganda made an effort to visit me but was turned away from my gate by the soldiers who have held me and my wife captive for the past five days.
— BOBI WINE (@HEBobiwine) January 18, 2021
Speaking through one of his associates, Wine said he had run out of food and that Brown was unable to leave any with him.
“The main motivation for us to keep doing what we’re doing in the face of all of this intimidation is because what we are doing is moral,” he said in an audio message posted on Twitter on Monday.
Wine rejects Saturday’s election results, saying he has evidence of fraud and intimidation. He did not provide details of that alleged evidence, saying his team would share it when communications lines were restored.
Uganda’s government spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, wrote in an opinion piece that Brown shouldn’t “cry for Ugandans,” and accused the US of meddling.
“For Natalie to cast doubt that elections wouldn’t be ‘credible’ merely because the US embassy had voluntarily pulled out of observation, is aimless shooting,” he said in the piece, which he posted on his Twitter page.
If US democracy was unassailable, Brown should first note President Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims and the Capitol riot, he added.
“As of now, Natalie should be the last person giving unqualified lectures on election integrity.”
The US decided not to observe the elections due to the electoral commission’s decision to deny more than three-quarters of its accreditation requests, said Brown in a statement on Wednesday, a day ahead of the elections.
The embassy called on the Museveni’s government to respect its citizens’ “human rights and fundamental freedoms” and to “uphold international human rights standards.”
