Many bodies and NGOs have talked a lot about torture in Uganda but the Government of Uganda and its security institutions do not support torture as alleged.
However, some of the alleged torture comes out of the financial squeeze, for example, the amount of money allocated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs is limited and it has resulted in the following;
The Police and the prison cells are highly congested. The number of people they are holding is extremely far bigger than what they are supposed to hold.
In such circumstances, the rights of prisoners are violated. The police and prisons do not have enough money to construct enough police and prison cells to fit the rising numbers of offenders.
In such a situation, the petty criminals are mixed up with hardcore criminals where as the international standard of treating offenders dictates that the petty criminals must be separated.
Therefore, those hardcore criminals at night may take that advantage and torture the other criminals. It may appear as if Government has a policy of using these hardcore criminals to torture other criminals, which is not the case.
The limited funds also affect the way suspects are supposed to be fed and as a result of limited funds, they are not well fed but it’s not a deliberate torture strategy.
There is also another challenge of providing medical care to the suspects, the police can only afford to provide them with first Aid but they are supposed to take them to hospitals for treatment with no budget to cater for the costs.
Many times, suspects are not taken on time to courts, most especially in rural areas. And on many occasions either police does not have a vehicle or it has mechanical fault. Those conditions sometimes make it impossible to produce suspects in courts of law on time. And this may later be interpreted by many as torture.
Many people arrested on simple cases, but they are ignorant about the law and they lack money to pay lawyers to defend them in courts of law. Eventually when they are charged in courts of law, many people interpret it as torture.
There is also an issue interpreted as torture; there are complaints that there so many suspects who are not allowed to be seen by their relatives, friends and family members. There is a lot of stigma associated with imprisonment and which many people are arrested, they do not want police to inform their relatives and friends. In fact, many people do not want their relatives and friends to know that they have been arrested.
It is also not news in Uganda that some saboteurs deliberately kidnap and kill innocent Ugandans in order to discredit the government in power. That is why security agencies have been tirelessly investigating the killers of various girls around towns, but thorough investigations take a lot of time and coordination between security agencies, but the population want security to release information unfortunately which is unprofessional.
It is the reason why once officers are identified, they are held liable personally; many of them have been taken to disciplinary committees, others are in prisons while others have been dismissed from the security forces.
The government should find ways of increasing on the Judges, Magistrates, and state Attorney to ensure that cases are disposed off expeditiously. All those delays in the justice system are interpreted as a deliberative of the suspects, yet the people who don’t know law, place the blame on police because it’s the police not the court that arrests the suspects.
There is also one other problem which is the fact that the police department that is supposed to sensitize the population does not do its work effectively such that even when an individual who is arrested legally, the ignorant population faces it as torture of innocent citizen. Because the police liaison department has failed to link up with the population and to explain relevant issues effectively.
The constitution of Uganda established the Uganda Human rights Commission to handle all issues related with Human rights and has a quasi power to listen to complaints that led to the violation of Human rights.
Sometimes they hear those complaints and even establish damages to be paid, but they do not selectively ensure that some of the tortured suspects are paid their damages in order to reduce the pressure on government. Government should always use this as an excuse to defend its self.
