Protests break out after Ugandan police shut Kenyan school

juma chrispinus

June 26, 2018 12:42 PM

The Ugandan forces recently detained 3 Kenyan police.

Protests have broken out in controversial Migingo Island after Ugandan police shut down Kenyas only school in the island.

A group of fishermen on Tuesday afternoon staged demos after the Ugandan police closed down the first and only Kenyan kindergarten on Migingo, saying the island is Ugandan.

Migingo Sub-location Assistant Chief Esther Masaku on Monday said Ugandan security officers stormed the nursery school which was only two weeks old and closed it citing that the Island does not belong to Kenya.

She said the Ugandan authorities claim that allowing Kenyans to establish a nursery school in the Island would mean that Migingo belongs to Kenya.

ALSO READ: Ugandan army arrest 3 Kenyan police officers

This comes barely a week after the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) officers detained three Kenyan police officers near Mageta and Hama Islands in Lake Victoria and taken to the neighbouring country by boat.

Witnesses told the Nation that the officers’ guns were taken away as were their phones before they were taken to Bugiri Mainland Prison in Uganda at about 6pm.

3 Police officers

Siaya County Administration Police Commandant Patrick Lumumba said the 3pm incident involved up to eight soldiers on patrol.

The officers, he said, were rounded up and put together with Kenyan fishermen found catching fish in Ugandan waters.

Lumumba said the attackers, who were heavily armed, first hijacked five Kenyan boats and took away their engines.

"Our officers were overpowered by the heavily armed attackers who lay an ambush on the officers who assumed they were civilians and fishermen," said Lumumba.

Nyanza Regional Commissioner Moffat Kangi was set to visit the area to try and resolve the tiff.

It is the second such high-profile detention by Ugandan authorities guarding the lake.

In November last year, the Foreign ministry had to intervene after 17 fishermen in Homa Bay were arrested and detained in Uganda over illegal fishing.

juma chrispinus