Uganda Rulers Free Political Prisoners : 1,203 Jailed by Obote Released in Move to Improve Rights Record

KAMPALA, Uganda — The new military regime of Uganda freed 1,203 political prisoners Saturday whom it said were jailed by the ousted civilian president, Milton Obote. A Cabinet member called the release “a wind of change” in Uganda’s often-criticized human rights record.

The list of prisoners included guerrillas who fought the Obote government and some top aides of former dictator Idi Amin. In releasing the 1,203, the new regime largely fulfilled a pledge made late last week that 1,400 of Obote’s foes would be released. The prisoners, all from a maximum-security prison near Kampala, arrived by truck at a ceremony in a downtown square packed with a cheering throng estimated at 70,000.

Gen. Tito Okello, named head of state two days after a July 27 coup, announced at the ceremony that the new regime will hold peace talks in Tanzania on Tuesday with the main anti-Obote guerrilla faction, the Uganda National Resistance Army. He predicted that talks with other guerrilla factions will follow.

Met by Dignitaries

Okello, fellow army officers and members of the new Cabinet were joined by foreign diplomats and religious leaders at City Square for the prisoner release. Red Cross workers met the prisoners to arrange their transportation home.

Former prisoners said in interviews that their treatment at Luzira was tolerable, although they received only meager, once-daily rations. But one of them, James Namakajo, 38, said he knows of 68 prisoners who died of starvation or lack of medical treatment at two other prisons where he was held.

“People were starving to death. People were eating banana peels, if they got them, and they got sick from picking rubbish to eat,” he said.

Obote’s government had been widely accused of sanctioning human rights abuses by prison officials and security forces.

‘Wind of Change’

The new interior minister, Paul Ssemogerere, said at the ceremony that the prisoner release and the military rulers’ disavowal of violent reprisals against Obote supporters are “only the first signs of a wind of change in the relations between the government and the people of Uganda in the field of human rights.”

Okello told the crowd that Obote failed to bring peace or justice to Uganda.

“Beginning with the regime of Idi Amin, our country has suffered continuously from a process of political and moral decay,” Okello said. “The human rights guaranteed by the constitution were frequently violated.”

Human rights groups say Amin ordered the killing of tens of thousands of opponents during his 1971-79 rule.

Some freed prisoners, including 44 women, said they believe that about 200 anti-Obote guerrillas remain in detention. There was no official confirmation of this report or explanation as to why some rebels might not have been freed.

Ssemogerere said the only people detained since the coup were about 100 members of the dissolved National Security Agency, Obote’s secret police.

Munno, a Roman Catholic newspaper in Kampala, reported recently that more than 1,000 of Obote’s bodyguards and secret police agents had been detained.

Okello is trying to arrange negotiations among Uganda’s political parties aimed at forming a broad-based interim government. He has promised that democratic elections will be held within a year.