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Torture: Moment of truth long overdue
Police arrest a Ugandan student and a Belgian environmental activist while they protested against the EACOP project at the Chinese Embassy in Kololo, Kampala, on August 5, 2024. PHOTOS | BUSEIN SAMILU
What you need to know:
The issue: Human rights
Our view: There is utterly no justification for torture
The Uganda Police Force’s acknowledgement of concerns that one of its officers reportedly tortured youth who took part in last month’s march to Parliament protests reflects the realisation, belated but nevertheless welcome, that it cannot be business as usual. The allegations that have in recent days stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb continue to cast an unvarnished light on the country’s security apparatus.
Illegal arrests, kidnaps, torture and detention without trial have all, at a certain point, been used as handy tools by security personnel to create a climate of fear. The status quo, unfortunately, pretty much remains the same to date. Oftentimes, the dimensions of the dark arts (i.e., torture, being detained incommunicado, etc.) are so terrifyingly abhorrent that the prevailing idea projects Uganda as the very embodiment of a banana republic.
Purveyors of that train of thought cannot be accused of dancing around the awful truth. Here is why: Suspects are continually arraigned in courts with missing finger nails, shredded clothes, and bruised bodies, to mention but three.
The failure of the country’s security apparatus to extricate itself from torture’s embrace is particularly intriguing not least because its methods do not produce actionable intelligence. It is evident that the seemingly irresistible urge to torture lies in the paralysing horror and chilling effect of the situation. The seeds that it intends to sow are those of fear.
We join right-thinking members of our society in declaring that there is utterly no justification for torture. Besides drawing a blind to basic human decency, torture makes a mockery of human rights law, including the UN convention against the same.
Torture is also woefully unequal to any challenge confronting state actors. Because of this, a judicial inquiry should establish the extent to which this monster has been woven into the country’s fabric. The aspect of checks and balances in our current dispensation, which, at best, is tenuous, will roar back to life if the culpability of those directly involved in torture is established. Ditto those in the executive branch who order or approve it.
To be clear, our growing knowledge of the systematic brutalisation of suspects leaves no doubt that Uganda is fast descending into a Wild West. An honest reckoning is long overdue to pull the country back from the brink if not abyss. From the effecting of arbitrary arrests to detentions before suspects are brought to court, torture has always been and remains the raison d’être of our security forces. They feed off it as humans do with oxygen.
Such are the depths of the torture programme that Ugandans have been desensitised to something that is as ghastly as it is repugnant. Put simply, torture, including sexual assault, has been normalised. We strongly believe that this should not be the case. Why? Because it is wrong in principle, ineffective in practice, and undermines any claim to leadership in the volatile Great Lakes region.
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