President Yoweri Museveni has asked that Kenya hand over its citizens from the Turkana ethnic group for trial after they are accused of killing five Ugandans in the unstable Karamoja region in March 2022.
Museveni gave the Turkanas a six-month deadline to leave the country in Executive Order No. 3 of 2023, which was published on May 19 as a decree to stop illegal guns from entering Uganda. He also threatened to deport them from the Ugandan territory if they failed to comply.
In an 18-page executive order made public on Wednesday, President Museveni said that any Turkana pastoralist crossing to Uganda with a gun would be charged with terrorism.
Three geologists from the Ministry of Energy, an officer from the Uganda People’s Defiance Forces, and a soldier were all killed in the raid by alleged Turkana cattle rustlers.
“The killers of the geologists must be returned to us for trial on murder charges. The guns have been returned to the government of Uganda, but not the killers,” the executive order reads in part.
The document, written in a terse tone, is likely to test relations between Uganda and the government of President William Ruto.
In his efforts to disarm the Karimojong warriors and maintain security in the region that borders Kenya to the northwest, President Museveni referred to the Turkana issue as “another destabilising factor.”
“I have issued Executive Order No. 3 of 2023, under the powers given to the President by Article 99 (2) of the 1995 Constitution. They cover the anti-cattle rustling efforts in North and North-Eastern Uganda, the damage to the environment by the charcoal business, the damage caused by the indisciplined nomads known as Balaalo, recasting the Uganda Police Force into an Uganda-wide Police instead of being a Kampala Police, and the problem of the Turkana nomads,” President Museveni tweeted on Wednesday.
“The killers of the geologists must be handed to us for trial for murder. The guns were handed back to us by the government of Uganda, but not the killers. In the alternative, the killers, with the coordination of the governments of Kenya and Uganda, should kukaraba (blood-settlement- mato-put), to the families of the deceased. The price of the kukaraba cannot be the traditional one, of a few cows. It must be adjusted to the full value of what the deceased would have contributed in his/ her life, which was cut short by those criminals,” Museveni notes in the executive order noted May 19, 2023.
The president also banned charcoal burning and trade, especially in northern Uganda.
