February 19, 1977, Page 3Buy Reprints
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb. 18—The Uganda radio said today that autopsies proved the country's Anglican Archbishop and two Cabinet ministers had died in an auto accident as the Government had originally announced.
It quoted President Idi Amin as having said he was not worried about protests from abroad challenging the Uganda announcement because he was “not guilty of any crime.”
According to the broadcast, Field Marshal Amin reiterated to a visiting United Nations delegation that Archbishop Janani Luwum, Interior Minister Charles Oboth‐Ofumbi and Lieut. Col. Erinayo Oryema, the Land Minister, had caused the crash by trying to overpower the driver of the car taking them to be questioned about charges that they had plotted against the President.
Independent Inquiries Sought
“The accident was indeed a punishment of God,” the President was quoted as having commented, “because God does not want people to carry out activities to make others suffer or even be killed?’
The members of what the Uganda broadcast described as a visiting United Nations delegation were not identified.
The broadcast came as statements indicating disbelief in the Uganda Government's announcement continued to be made around the world, with religious groups, human rights organizations and foreign governments calling for independent inquiries into the deaths. [In Vienna, Secretary General Kurt Waldheim of the United Nations issued a statement expressing the hope that the circumstances surrounding the deaths would be clarified.]
The Uganda radio said that it had been established that the Archbishop had died from a ruptured liver and lung. The cause of Colonel Oryema's death was said to have been extensive brain damage and internal bleeding. Mr. Oboth‐Ofumbi was said to have died of intercranial bleeding following brain damage.
Earlier in the day a Na?robi newspaper quoted what it described as reliable sources in Kampala, the Uganda capital, as having said the three men had been murdered. The newspaper, The Daily Nation, said the Archbishop and the two ministers had been shot to death in a Subaru sedan bearing the license number UVS 299.
The fact that the dead men were found in this car and not in a Land‐Rover, as the Government originally reported, was independently confirmed by a source in Kampala.
The Anglican Archbishop of Kenya, Festo Clang, left Nairobi today for Kampala. His associates here who have been in touch with churchmen in Uganda reported they had not heard when Archbishop Luwum's body would be released. A funeral has been scheduled for Sunday at St. Paul's Cathedral, the late Bishop's seat and the first Christian church established in Uganda, 100 years ago.
The death has touched off widespread demands in Africa for investigations and full‐scale disclosure or what has periodically been alleged to be a continuous reign of terror in Uganda. Christian ministers of Kenya, for example, said in a statement: “We confess that we have too often kept quiet when we should have indentified ourselves with the suffering and persecuted peoples of the continent of Africa and Uganda in particular.”
In Zambia, the Government newspaper, The Daily Mail, deplored the “massacres and reign of terror” that it said had dominated President Amin's six years in power.
Canon Burgess Carr, the director of the All Africa Conference of Churches, said, “Archbishop Luwum is only one more victim in the wave of atrocities in Uganda.” Canon Carr, who for years has sought to obtain international disclosure of reported mass killings in Uganda, said he was concerned “that the murder of the Archbishop may be part of a campaign of terror unleashed against Christians in Uganda.”
According to generally accepted statistics, the majority of Ugandans are either Catholics or Protestants, with a minority of Moslems. Mr. Amin, a Moslem, has publicly challenged these figures, saying that Uganda is a Moslem country.
The estimates of those who have either been killed or disappeared during Mr. Amin's rule range from 30,000 to 300,000, but no independent confirmation has been possible. This is largely because of the principle ardently professed by the members of the Organization of African Unity that all member states refrain from interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
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