29th July 2009
The Divisional Police Commander,
Jinja Road Police Station
Re: Nuwagaba Vincent MHC 1295/08
This is to bring to your notice that the above named was admitted to our Hospital as a patient in May 2008 and later discharged. Nuwagaba has not followed up treatment and has instead sued the state for alleged wrongful admission at the Hospital.
He unfortunately continues to visit the Hospital in an attempt to incite patients under our care. This is therefore to request you assist us keep the above named out of our Hospital gates to enable us offer our services efficiently to those that need them.
Yours sincerely,
Dr David Basangwa
FOR DIRECTOR
The DPC acknowledged receipt of the letter and noted thus, “correspondence received. OC Butabika please take note and liaise with the Hospital Management.
Salient questions in regard to the letter
The foregoing letter demands that I raise the following issues for public consumption:
Institutional Abuse
The letter portends a clear case of state failure and institutional abuse in a three- dimensional manner- personalisation of state institutions and/or offices, desecration of the otherwise sacrosanct police force and failure to appreciate that I have a right to seek legal redress by suing any individual (with exception of the president who is shielded by presidential immunity against prosecution) and institution including the state through the Attorney General.
1. The personalisation of public offices and institutions.
I have laboured to teach public officials that public offices and institutions are impersonal. No sane person can write such a letter and use the word our Hospital as if it is a private enterprise. If he says our hospital, whose hospital is it and whose is it not? Doesn’t our include me and any other Ugandans who part with a hefty thirty per cent (30%) of their salaries to keep the lousy and unscrupulous bureaucrats in offices and the dictatorship in power? I must warn Dr Basangwa and all administrators in Butabika and any other public institutions including president Museveni that any attempt to personalise any state institution will draw the ire and unprecedented rage of the politically conscious and civically awake citizens and the results will not be enjoyable to the office and institutional abusers. Please stand warned. No sane person could write such a letter but on the presumption that the author of the letter is a person of sound mind, I will take legal action using the letter as one of the documents to support my case.
2. Desecration of the otherwise revered Police Force
That the Uganda Police Force whose functions are clearly spelt out in our constitution can be used to perpetuate and orchestrate criminality and illegality is a sad commentary indeed. For anybody to restrain me from my moral and legal obligation to fight for social justice; to speak out for the voiceless; to enhance the release of the captives; to set free the enslaved is unacceptable and unfathomable. I have made it quite clear that I am following Gaudance Tushabomwe’s case at the moment. But there’s nothing whatsoever that deters me from pursuing more or less related cases and I have put it in black and white before that I am the most qualified to do that since I have undergone similar hell. I am sure, the Jinja Road Police station Divisional Police Commander, enlightened as he is will not succumb to the illegal, despicable, disgraceful and loathsome command of Dr Basangwa and Ms Grace Lubale. Their letter must be dismissed with costs.
3. My suit against the Attorney General - civil suit 52/2009
It is prudent that anyone who occupies a public office undergoes some basic training in public administration in which case he/she would be taught administrative law. The Hospital administration is acting ultravires by forcefully denying me access to a public institution simply because I sued the state. Assuming all other state institutions were to read from Butabika Hospital’s script, would that mean that I will be restricted from accessing and using any public office, institutions and public goods including schools, hospitals and roads? Are the Butabika administrators attempting to criminalise filing suits against the state or any public servant? It is naïve, immature and a result of sheer malice to attempt to block me from having access from institutions run by tax payers’ money. It is equally myopic for anyone to inanely think that I can succumb to such madness. I will move with my head unbowed, my faith unshaken in all state institutions as long as I have reasons that take me there. For the benefit of naïve people behind my harassment, I don’t count how many times I have gone to the president’s office, whether or not I see him is a different matter but I have never been denied access to the president’s office. So, who are Butabika Hospital Administrators to deny me access to the place that was meant to be a healing centre but has unfortunately been turned into a killing centre all in the interest of keeping the NRM dictatorship in power?
4. Is Dr Onen involved in my plight?
At first I was told that Dr Onen is the one who does not need me in the Hospital. Accordingly, when I was beaten on Tuesday 14th July 2009 I called him in the presence of Mr. JK Zirabamuzale, Chairman of Uganda Prisoners’ Aid Foundation. I put the phone in loud speaker and thus Mr. Zirabamuzale can attest to this. Dr Onen distanced himself from that act. He was pleading with me on phone not to involve him in that matter and he told me the Hospital Management is under Dr Kiggozi, Mr. Basangwa, Mr. Ronald Segawa and Ms Grace Lubaale and that Dr Onen has nothing to do with directing them on who they should restrain and who they should allow in. I believed in what Dr. Onen told me.
On Monday 27th July 2009, I went with the lady police sergeant to Butabika Hospital. Actually it is me who ironically facilitated her to do police work for I was told by none other than Mr. Ashraf Chemonges that the police force is not facilitated and they do their job patriotically and thus if I am to be “helped” I must facilitate the Investigating officer. Sadly, no sooner had I and the lady police officer reached the Hospital premises, than Grace Lubale called the Kampala Metropolitan Police Commander Mr. Soroweni telling him that I Vincent Nuwagaba was in the Hospital premises. Paradoxically, although I was told by the OC Station, Jinja Road Police Station that the police had no facilitation, Mr. Soroweni came with very many junior Police Officers and some key senior officers, DPC Jinja Road Mr Aguma, Regional Police Commander Moses Kafeero, OC Operations Jinja Road IP Alphonse Mutabazi among others.
These officers never talked to me but chose to talk to Dr Onen who has nothing to do with my assault case and Gaudance Tushabomwe’s case. Later the OC Operations, Jinja Road Mr. Mutabazi told me, “Nuwagaba, we have talked to Dr. Onen about your matter. Please don’t come back to the Hospital but wait for the court to handle your case” I told Mr Mutabazi, “Look, Mr. Mutabazi I have nothing to do with Dr Onen unless he comes out and says, it is me who ordered that the Hospital guards assault you” I went further to state, “My case with Dr Onen is in court and it will be handled there. Right now it is subjudice and I am not at liberty to discuss its merits and demerits”
On Friday 31st July 2009 I was once again beaten and this time by the police men Mr Kabanda and some other SPC. I wondered what sort of society Uganda is. Are we in a state of nature which according to Thomas Hobbes life is nasty, brutish and short and is characterized by violence of every man against every man? The DPC told me that each time I need to go and do research on mental health rights, I should always notify him so that he accompanies me. I appreciate that magnanimity but I find it impracticable. The DPC will not move by my time table and the reverse is true. Personally, if I am pursuing a matter, before it is concluded I cannot settle. Extremism in defence of justice is no vice and moderation in pursuit of right is no virtue. I cannot be patient when Tushabomwe is kept on health and life killing drugs. I think this is an extremely urgent matter and needs urgent attention short of which we shall see an innocent educated woman die at the hands of unscrupulous public officials.
Meanwhile on Saturday after I left the clinic where I had gone for treatment Dr Onen called me and talked to me for fourteen minutes. He told me he has nothing to do with my recent plight at the Hospital and he told me he never settles in Butabika for he goes to Soroti, Mbarara, Kabaale, Hoima and many other places. By the time I talked to him he was reportedly on his way to Hoima. He reiterated what he had told me before that the leadership of the Hospital is under the Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director, Principal Administrator, Senior Administrator and Administrator. He told me that Ugandans nowadays have resorted to committing crimes and hide under other people’s cover. He told me as a human rights defender, he couldn’t in any way bar me from doing my human rights research in the Hospital. He told me that he handled me for quite a short time when I was there and my case with him is basically over the report he wrote about me and I do concur with him. Dr Onen even challenged me to confirm whether the letter banning me was authored by him and indeed although inanely and without any sense of decorum the author never gave me a copy, I found out that it was written by Dr Basangwa David.
Dr Onen knows the implications of subjecting me to inhuman and degrading treatment like the hospital administration is doing. I have accordingly concluded with my lawyer that on the basis the letter written to the Jinja Road Divisional Police Commander and my eventual illegal arrest and detention we must file a suit against the attorney general, Mr. Basangwa, Ms Grace Lubale. Although the Hospital is a government Hospital, I shall not accept tax payers’ money to always be spent on unscrupulous public servants and that’s the reason as to why Ms Grace Lubale and Dr David Basangwa have to be sued jointly with the Attorney General. As a Christian I cherish individual responsibility for individual actions (Ezekiel 18:20 - The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself).
Accordingly, Grace Lubale who has turned into a disgrace and Dr Basangwa will pay dearly for subjecting me to inhumane treatment and all the other funny ordeal I have gone through.
5. My arrest and illegal detention at Jinja Road Police Station
As I have already mentioned in the foregoing, I learnt on Wednesday 5th August 2009 that Gaudence Tushabomwe was being subjected to inhumane treatment. Immediately, I ran to Butabika Hospital to arrest the situation. Because the Senior Hospital Administrator Grace Lubale had told me that I could only be given permission to talk to inmates by the Executive Director, I went straight to the Director’s office. Upon reaching the Director’s office, I was told he was for a meeting and that his deputy was also in the said meeting. I begged to see the third person in hierarchy who is the Principal Hospital Administrator Mr. Ronald Ssegawa. I was led to the Principal Administrator’s office by the secretary to the Executive Director.
While in the Principal Administrator’s office, Grace Lubega came with police operatives and arrested me. Within a matter of minutes, a police patrol vehicle came for me and took me to Jinja Road police station. At Jinja Road, I was injected with a certain drug which I don’t know to date and I must stress I should be told what that drug is. Otherwise, I suspect it may be a slow killing toxin which needs to be drained from my body very soon. I was also forcefully divested of my property and money and thrown into the filthy jail.
Shortly after dumping me in jail, they cut off water and I am sure the purpose was to ensure that I get the real feel of the jail. Because there was no water, the toilets had an offensive odour and I almost developed a running stomach. I together with a Rapid Response Unit operative Ali Magambo put the police officers on duty on pressure to give us water. Magambo faced the wrath of the OC CID and OC Station as they pulled him and embarrassed him so as to silence him. I maintained that if I was the problem, they should discharge all other inmates or remove me from the cells and put me in a secluded cell wherein I would be effectively given the appropriate punishment. Otherwise, I would not accept other inmates to stay without water just because, “stubborn” Nuwagaba was detained.
I was detained incommunicado for my phone was snatched from me by Police Constable Alule as I was talking to Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Julius Shalita. The hell I went through was horrible but was nowhere near the one I have already undergone. After two days on Friday 7th I was beseeched to call anybody that could stand surety for me so that I am given bond. I was told by the Officer in Charge of Criminal Investigation Department (OC CID) Jinja Road that I shouldn’t go back to Butabika because it is only administrators that complain about me. I told the OC CID that as long as they keep human beings in Butabika, as a human rights defender, I have both a moral and legal obligation to research and investigate about the human rights situation therein.
I said, it is laughable, despicable, illogical, ridiculous, ludicrous and sheer inanity to charge me of criminal trespass in a state institution. I maintained that I needed to be taken to court but nothing could be done.
Meanwhile, at a time of my arrest I had 423,500 (four hundred twenty three thousand five hundred) Uganda shillings and 1 US Dollar. Upon my release I found out that my money was stolen and many files in my computer were tampered with and I ended up losing my invaluable documents and information thereon.
They declared only 3500 shillings, typical of what they have always done. I also own three phones but only two phones were declared and ultimately given to me. In the presence of my cousin January Sunday, shamelessly the officer who was handling my property could not give me back the paper on which my property was recorded. But, at least, it is clear that they cannot give any paper on which I signed.
What’s more laughable when I said I had dollars, the OC CID whom I am convinced is more understanding compared to his other colleagues told me that I will be asked where I got the dollars from. I wonder whether he could have asked that question because for him he has never held any dollars in his hands or because he took me to be too cheap to hold any dollars in my hands. As the Banyankole say, “efiire etyo ebagwa etyo”, I knew I would never be under any obligation to explain the source of the dollars but just to let him know even our Ugandans who do business in south Sudan, most of them use dollars as foreign exchange. But, also if the OC CID never learnt basic Economics, a US dollar is one of the hard and stable currencies that we have and I accordingly have never been without any dollars. That said however, I feel succumbing to the OC CID’s inanity and myopia is out of question.
Tampering with my computer in addition to stealing my computer and memory sticks which the police did last year (when I was illegally detained at CPS and later taken to Butabika) is the worst crime ever committed against me and if the police leadership is genuinely mandated to fight crime and deter crime, the officers who perpetrate criminal activities against citizens must be punished with an iron hand.
Conclusion
We need to understand why Butabika Hospital is out of bounds to journalists because I am sure they would help improve the image of this institution by exposing the ills therein. The Police Force is now fully desecrated. Besides, militarizing it by deploying military cadet officers in the force, the police officers have been given a green light to extort money from motorists. Accordingly, many officers act as traffic officers and the rate at which they are fleecing the motorists is unbelievable. Nonetheless, all these are signs of a decadent regime and demented leadership. Like Honourable Norbert Mao has always argued, fish starts rotting from the head. The presidency is a failed institution and thus all other institutions have read from the president’s script and since many institutional heads take Museveni to be their role model they think they are on track by doing what he has done and what he likes. This is a clear signal of Machiavellian politics with the unholy principle of “the end justifies the means”. We must prepare to give the current regime a decent political burial lest it turns its head in the political grave and return to haunt innocent Ugandans. May the NRM rest in eternal peace come 2011. Finally, personally I am very passionate about human dignity and as such I believe that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. For God and my country!
Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender and can be reached at vnuwagaba@gmail.com or +256702 843 552
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