Vincent Nuwagaba
This article was published by the Razor on Tuesday July 12, 2011
On Friday July 8, 2011 I spent almost the whole day detailing the ordeals I have gone through with the police at the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) so that my complaints could be handled by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC). Later, around 4pm I went to the Central Police Station and passed via the lower side of the constitutional square. As usual I found the mean-looking policemen guarding the constitutional square and I reminded them of my non-violent hunger strike within the constitutional square from where I want to make my position clear on a number of constitutional viruses that have infested our once pearl of Africa.
The policemen stopped me from passing through the constitutional square and for the sake of keeping peace, I obliged. I then went straight to the CPS wherein I was illegally detained from Monday June 27, 2011 till Thursday June 30th. I approached the police officers with humility and humour. Instead of criticizing I engaged them intellectually and we had a fruitful discussion. I had earlier tasked my brother Jamil Mujurizi, a Legal Assistant with Uganda Prisoners’ Aid Foundation to get my items from CPS. I found out that a yellow polythene bag with which I wanted to be released was not given to him and I understood the cause as being that it contained my findings within the cells. There was a gentleman who was registered as Abdul Nasser and was detained in the police cells for three weeks on flimsy grounds. By the time I entered the cells I found him acting as RP Cho (in charge of the toilet). He told me his real name was not Abdul Nasser but I forgot it for I had documented it in a notebook that was within that yellow polythene bag. That gentleman told me he was born in 1966 but they recorded his age as 30 so he was wondering how the police could do such a thing. He also told me of an officer who made him wipe sewage without any protective gears and complained of the ill health that it had created to him.
This gentleman whom one can rightly call Mapengo for he never had two of his front teeth told me he is from Jinja and I found him knowing Mohammed Kezaala so well. While the rest were making their unfounded deductions about me, he said in Luganda, “Ono mukozi w’eklezia katolika enkuru omunsi yonna”. I was touched by what he said and saw in him prophetic powers because, although I had a bible, I wasn’t wearing a rosary and I hadn’t told anybody that I was a Catholic. What many inmates called me was Pastor. In addition to that information, the police stayed with my pair of trousers, my shirt and my checked jacket. I maintain that they must produce them. Furthermore my three books namely, what is Africa’s problem by Yoweri Museveni, Promises not kept by John Isibister and Africa and the international system by Christopher Clapham were not given to Jamil.
What greatly annoyed me is that as I was going to Uganda Prisoners’ Aid Foundation, I was waylaid at the constitutional square by a very brown small man wearing a thin moustache who boxed and kicked me in front of very many people who kept saying, “tokuba muna Uganda”. He even displayed a pistol and told me he could shoot me and nothing is done to him. I immediately met Adam Luzindana who is an insider in the NRM and asked him whether Museveni fought so that we could be brutalized. Adam took me and we faced the man whom many call Kayihura because he handles brutal assignments from Kayihura. I pity Uganda! I will formally file a complaint against him and seek an injunction from trampling on my rights. The constitutional square neither belongs to Kayihura nor Museveni and none has a right to deprive us access to the square. Finally, the police and military impunity has gone beyond tolerable levels. For God and my country.
Mr. Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
vnuwagaba@gmail.com
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