Omera Opiyo,
Greetings from where you know I am!
I write to you a few minutes to midnight on the day you were brutally arrested and detained in one of our country’s notorious torture and detention centers. I am confident that you will be accessed in the morning by your lawyers, and friends despite their inability to do so this evening.
From wherever you read this message – in a crowded cell, out on bail or in a post-ordeal comfort wherever, just know that the outpouring love from all over the world is testimony for the courageous stand you have taken to defend right and advocate for justice. A struggle that I am sure you are willing to pay the ultimate price, like many have already.
The panicky regime has touched several wrong buttons and your arrest is just one of them. Like you advised during another of the reckless stunts by Uganda’s security forces in 2017, we should not waste a good crisis. Your arrest is yet another opportunity to continue to shine a bright light in the darkness of Uganda’s lethal and brutal regime who have tortured and detained thousands in many notorious detention centers across the country and killed hundreds on the streets and in their homes in the last month alone. An ailing leader surrounded by sycophants around him will continue to dig in, and the situation in our beloved country will get worse before it finally gets better.
The blood of innocent Ugandans will not be shed in vain and the day for full reckoning can only draw closer with each arrest, torture, and murder.
I am sure, you will upon your release be quick to remind us all that this is not about you. It is a protracted struggle to liberate our country from the claws of an inept, corrupt, paranoid and increasingly incompetent regime. A country so blessed with a resilient people and a buzzing youth population deserves better and will rise and shine. Our mis-rulers must and will surely go.
For now, keep the smile, avoid anger and may the outpouring love and concern for you push you to do even more for those that are less privileged than you are – the people you have ceaselessly fought and put your life on the wire for. They are in their thousands in our prisons and torture chambers – keep up the fight for their freedom.
Rubanga ogwok kwoni!
Arthur LAROK
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