TO TORTURE OR NOT TO TORTURE?

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In the last few days the critics have had the government on the back foot, following the release of author Kakwenza Rukirabasaija. Kakawenza had been in detention since the end of last year during which time he claimed he had been tortured by state agents and had the scars to prove it.

He was charged with offensive communication for saying unflattering things about President Yoweri Museveni and his son Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, after which he was released on bail. As I write this it has been reported he has jumped bail and fled the country.

This sequence of events is disturbing on very many levels.

There seems to be no doubt that Kakwenza’s detention and mistreatment was carried out by agents of the state, not least of all because they had the good manners to produce him before court after they had worked him over. Ironically this is a source of comfort but also further discomfort.

On the one hand if it was your regular kidnapper they may have just dumped him by the roadside somewhere – dead or alive. The discomfort would come from the idea that state agents can mete this kind of brutality on anyone let alone a citizen of Uganda...

We in the public were further confused. Is this now government policy in dealing with people they disagree with or the work of rogue elements in the security services working at the behest of individuals?

It could not be the former because the framers of the constitution did not even try to qualify torture. In one sentence, in article 24 they said “No person shall be subjected to any form of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. “

No lesser an authority than the President himself is on the record for condemning torture as a means of interrogation.

But beyond that, this whole adventure –the NRM project, can be called into question. The bush war was a protest against a flawed election, but even more importantly, to defend the integrity of Ugandans who had suffered gross human rights violations for years.  For a younger generation those are all old wives’ tales, but when they are confronted with present day rights violations, who are you to tell them anything about the past?

When I joined journalism in the 1990 one of the senior journalists at the time, told me that in the early 1980s he used to come to work with his passport in his back pocket, just in case. The way journalists these days play fast and loose with the truth they clearly have no fear of extrajudicial reprisals.

In a strange way it would be more comforting if the use of torture was government policy, because then using the various levers of influence the public has at its disposal -- the courts, their MPs and the media, and maybe able to influence government to see the error of their ways and change the policy altogether. But we know this is not government policy as several officials have said.

The alternative is far scarier.

That there are rogue elements in government and security, pursuing personal agendas, in defiance of the president, meting out their particular brand of justice, a power onto themselves, means none of us is safe. We are at the mercy of their whims.

Following the argument to its logical conclusion it is not a stretch of imagination to think, left to their own devices their influence will grow to the point … well, they are already openly defying the president.

If this last scenario is so then Kakwenza is a sign of a bigger problem.

We see a silver lining in this very dark cloud. That we can discuss it in the open. That may not seem like much, but there was a time – another old wives’ tale, that we wouldn’t dare talk about missing friends and relatives, they were out of sight and out of mind for fear that we would go the same way.

"The UPDF, owe it to themselves and their proud history to get to investigate, get to the bottom of, remedy and nip in the bud this threat to national security, because that is what it is....