The Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye arriving in Kenya for medical treatment last month. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images
Uganda’s top opposition leader was kicked off a flight from Kenya on Wednesday, prompting riots back home that police quelled with teargas a day before the country’s president of 25 years was due to be sworn in for another term.
Kizza Besigye said he was waiting to board a flight when a Kenya Airways official informed him that the plane would not be allowed to land in Uganda with Besigye on it. A government spokesman in Uganda denied that authorities had interfered with his return.
Anti-government marches led by Besigye over the past month have been the most serious unrest in sub-Saharan Africa since protests swept out leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Human Rights Watch says Ugandan security forces have killed nine people during the protests.
The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, who first came to power in 1986, has said repeatedly that his government will not fall to protests. He was re-elected in February and his inauguration is set for Thursday.
Besigye said the country’s constitution guaranteed him the right to return home.
“Every Ugandan has the right all the time to return to Uganda. So it’s a contradiction that he wants to swear by that constitution tomorrow which he is violating today,” Besigye said. “This is what we are confronting – impunity.”
Besigye, who election officials said finished second in the vote, has been arrested five times while leading protests over rising prices and government corruption. During his last arrest, he was sprayed at point-blank range with teargas or pepper spray and was temporarily blinded.
He tried to return home on Wednesday after seeking medical care in Kenya. Besigye said there were indications that the government would allow him to return home in the evening.
Chris Karanja, a Kenya Airways spokesman, said the airline could not take Besigye to Uganda “because of safety reasons”.
“Intelligence reports showed that it was not safe to fly him to Uganda. We cannot share why but our internal intelligence showed that it was not safe for him to board the plane,” Karanja said.
Food and fuel prices have risen sharply in Uganda in the past few months, fuelling the anti-government protests. Museveni said he would propose a constitutional amendment so that protesters were jailed for at least six months after arrest, instead of being released on bail the same day.
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