Police under military capture, study notes

The suggestion would be that the police presence at SIU is a convenient cover for CMI’s authority and control over the detention facility. It is here where persons who have been unlawfully detained and probably tortured end up.

The study found that military capture of Uganda’s police is largely responsible for the emergence of the phenomenon of political policing, which in turn opened the floodgates to egregious human rights violations during crowd control operations.

But army spokesperson, Brig Felix Kulayigye, denies the accusations of military capture, and says on the contrary, “What is factual is that we are the only army with the directorate of human rights headed by professional lawyers.”

He added: “We have charged officers and men and sentenced them to death for being involved in violation of human rights, especially if it involved murder.”

Nonetheless, retired deputy Inspector General of Police, Mr Julius Odwee, is adamant in his agreement with NETPIL, observing that “government should not think that the gaps in police can be filled by deploying soldiers; the army have got a different doctrine and the police, their doctrine is different.”

Civil service rules

Police officers are civil servants and are obliged by the law and training to apply human rights law standards in regard to the use of force. 

Military personnel typically operate under international humanitarian law principles on the use of force, which permit direct targeting of combatants.

Mr Busingye Kabumba, a lecturer at Makerere University’s School of Law, opines, “…but it is also important not to absolve the police itself, not to use the presumption that the police is okay because all the facts in Uganda point to the history of the police not being okay, being as bad as, if not in some cases, even worse than the army.”

Mr Kabumba notes that there is something that goes to the soul of security forces—the question as to whether they appreciate the relationship “between a citizen and the state and how that is conceptualised, they don’t see the person protesting as a citizen who has legitimate rights.”

In 2001, the Justice Julia Sebutinde Commission, which was appointed to probe the police force, discovered that the Criminal Investigations Department was a den of rogues who pocketed bribes from murder suspects and other criminals to destroy evidence.

The 1995 Constitution appeared to reverse military capture, which was transplanted from the colonial state to the Obote I and Idi Amin’s regimes, by marking out the distinct roles of the separate security institutions.

Under Article 212, the Uganda Police Force (UPF) is supposed to protect life and property; to preserve law and order; to prevent and detect crime, among others. 

The Police Act, which operationalises this provision, also establishes two key statutory bodies, namely, the Police Authority and the Police Council, whose functions include giving advice on policy and practice on training, use of firearms, and military roles.

The composition of these bodies includes members who can be directly appointed and dismissed by the President without any deference to the Public Service Commission. This complex yet strategic ambiguity serves as an avenue within the law to facilitate military capture of police, the study observes.

Militarised police

The study reveals that the militarisation went a notch-higher under former police chief, Gen (rtd) Kale Kayihura’s leadership under whom the police forces became notorious at clamping of civil protests. In addition, the President created a new position of Chief of Joint Staff that was previously unknown to the police structure. Combined with the position of IGP and DIGP, the top leadership positions of influence in the UPF, which are contract based, add up to 20. Six of them are currently headed by military officers. 

The study reveals that the Police Council comprises directors heading newly established directorates who were appointed by the President. This circumvents the oversight role of the Public Service Commission and hands control back to the President.

Under the new system, the UPF recruits its own personnel and then forwards a list of recruits to the Public Service Commission for perfunctory approval. 

In the past, previous recruitment processes through the commission involved bureaucratic checks on civic awareness and aptitude tests.

“Candidates were not examined on their ideological inclinations about political parties, which seems to be a mainstay under the new recruitment standards,” the study reveals.

That observation explains how Gen Kayihura was able to oversee the massive recruitment of young university graduates who were aligned with the ruling NRM party political ideology. Blaise Kamugisha, a zealous lackey of Kayihura and leader of crime preventers during a meeting attended by the President on March 28, 2018, at Lugogo Indoor Stadium in Kampala, ominously asserted that “a crime preventer can give his life for the President. We can kill for the President...”

Receive, train
Key respondents observed the notorious practice dubbed “receive and train” through which individuals join the UPF through military and political patronage networks. 

The appointment of military personnel to directorship positions with no additional training on policing roles, skills and functions has created frustration among trained and career police officers who are now unable to receive effective supervision on practical aspects of their policing work, nor mentorship on professional policing, the study reveals.