By Haggai Matsiko
On February 8, 2022, the Ugandan parliament was unusually charged. One after another, legislators lambasted government over widespread state-sponsored torture. Kampala Central MP, Mohammad Nsereko, had increasingly toned down his criticism of government. But on this day, he was unusually livid.
The problem was so severe that that torture victims were owed Shs12 billion in the form of compensation, as a result of having been tortured by errant officers, he said. Even fellow legislators werent spared. Courts had judged that MP, Francis Zaake, had been tortured and was awaiting compensation, Nsereko told parliament.
“We cannot keep quiet,” Nsereko said, “Our silence is deafening. If we fall silent, then where will people run?”
Anita Among, who then as Deputy Speaker, was charing parliament—Speaker Jacob Oulanyah was away on sick leave before passing on—interjected. “Much as he (Zaake) was tortured – as you have said – he was able to win a gold medal in athletics as Member of Parliament of Uganda with a broken leg…I am appreciating my Member that he won a gold medal for us,” Among said (Hansard Feb.8)
Zaake was incensed. He took to his X account the following day and lambasted her, describing her comments as “idiocy” and “meant to mock him and break me down”.
Among would later respond by sanctioning a parliamentary hearing into his conduct that led to his removal as a parliamentary commissioner.
But more incensed was the Concerned Citizens Activist Uganda (CCAU) and Lubaga Social Justice Centre, chaired by Habib Buwembo. They organised a press conference at Pope Paul Memorial Hotel in Ndeeba, accused Among of trivialising concerns on state-sponsored torture.
To make their case, they listed several instances of severe state torture. These included when Dr Besigye’s car was damaged by Gilbert Bwana, who then pepper-sprayed him. Since then, they claimed, Dr Besigye had lost his eyesight. They also cited an example of Masereka, a NUP coordinator from Kasese, who had also undergone hell at Nalufenya.
They also cited an example of the former mayor of Kamwenge whose kneecaps were drilled while in detention at Nalufenya, and he later died after being released. He was not even an opposition element, he was an NRM member and had won an election on NRM ticket.
Another case of torture, which they brought up, had even come up during the parliamentary debate.
“You all saw a gentleman called Kakwenza – we cannot keep quiet,” Nsereko had said, “He was arrested, detained beyond the reasonable hours prescribed by the Constitution and beaten to pulp like you all saw. Up to now, you can see all the marks on him after being beaten. What message are we sending out to the country; that officers can arrest people and detain them?”
Buwembo and fellow activists had been pursuing the release of Kakwenza for months. They had even secured a court order, ordering for his immediate release. In the company of his wife, they had taken the court order to prision.
But prison warders had declined to receive it claiming Buwembo and group were not officers of court and as such they couldn’t get documents from them. The warders had gone ahead to sneak out Kakwenza and rushed him to his home. But Kakwenza would later talk to the media and reveal the wounds he had sustained.
“Seeing Kakwenza’s back never left some of us in the space of activism the same,” Buwembo said. “We resolved that he should come out and speak.”
He added: “We gave her (Among) an ultimatum of seven days within which she had to come out and apologise to one, the victims of torture, two, to their relatives, three, to the public,” Buwembo said.
If the Speaker didn’t heed their call and also apologise within seven days, they would take further action, they vowed. Even before the presser was done, police raided the venue and arrested some of the activists. Buwembo escaped.
It was a Friday. The following Tuesday, a group of activists stormed Among’s home with crutches as evidence of state torture with people who had been maimed and sat at the gates of her home in Nakasero calling for her to order to open up her eyes.
The Special Forces Command (SFC) personel, part of her security detail, crashed the protest instantly. One of the operatives brutalised a journalist from the New Vision and destroyed his cameras. While some of the activists managed to run away, many were arrested and detained.
That very week, another group of activists stormed the parliament with a pig painted in red colours around its lips, then yellow and white covered with a white handkerchief or a white small towel. They said the red colour on the pig’s lips represented the red lipstick that Anita Among wears on her lips.
Yellow, the political party she was affilliated to. White, the wigs that she wears. The pig represented her greed. When a pig is eating, it does not think beyond the feed its feeding on. When the feed is finished, it can even decide to feed on its young ones.
Buwembo didn’t participate in these two protests.
Around this time, Among told parliament that she feared fo her life. She told parliament that there were people trailing her. She asked parliament to beef up her security.
Buwembo claims that he was later informed that after that, Among reported to the highest levels of police that the person commanding the groups that wanted to kill her was Habib Buwembo.
She claimed that Buwembo had commanded the teams that raided her home and her workplace. If they had successfully attacked her from home and her workplace, and had gone ahead to issue an ultimatum of seven days for her to come out and apologise, she wondered, what would happen to her life after the elapse of the seven days.
One Thursday morning, 9:30am, Buwembo was on a phone talking to one of his brothers, while leaving home. Suddenly, four people surrounded him.
“Yes, Afande, we have him,” one of them relayed a message on a radio call.
“I know the man,” he added, “This is him”
“What is going on?” Buwembo asked.
“You are under arrest,” the man responded.
Buwembo immediately got off the phone and put it his pocket.
“Under arrest for what?” he asked again.
“Please try to cooperate with us,” the man threatened before adding, “If you don’t, we are going to take you the Kakwenza way.”
Buwembo quickly recalled the images of the scars on Kakwenza’s back. The photos had been trending. He said they had traumatised him and colleagues in the activism space.
“So when I heard that, I froze,” he said. He handed over the two phone and the laptop bag he was carrying as they had ordered.
Immediately, he saw a group of military and police officers running towards them. They surrounded them. Four trucks arrived.
He was a few metres from his home. The entire area is full of residential houses. He turned and could only see neighbours trying to peep to observe what was going on. No one made an alarm. He did not see anyone recording a video or taking a picture with his phone.
“I was engulfed with a lot of fear for my life,” Buwembo said.
There had been a lot of allegations of kidnaps and abductions and Buwembo thought this was his end. They pushed him into a double cabin. A police truck led the convoy and two other trucks followed.
There were sticks and an AK-47 in the double cabin. After what felt like a life-time of driving, Buwembo gathered courage and asked one of the officers where they were taking him.
“I have been cooperative to you,” he said, “why are you not talking to me. I am a simple man.”
“You are not simple,” the officer finally responded. “Do you know how long it has taken us tracking you?”
The officer removed his phone and showed him that in the evening he was at Wakaligga, where they stationed for hours. Then later they lost him until morning. He remembered that indeed, he had been in Wakaligga and his phone had gone off as the battery got drained. He later went to Busega.
He started charging his phone but it was still off. He switched it on in the morning and started making calls. That is when they managed to locate him again.
“You cannot know how badly we have been looking for you,” the officer said, “Our bosses are at our necks. If I show you how many calls I have received between yesterday and now, you cannot just imagine. But anyway we are taking you to our bosses at Kibuli CID Headquarters.”
“When I heard Kibuli, I regained my life,” Buwembo said, adding that all along he had been worried, he was being driven to state torture chambers.
At Kibuli, they called Charles Twiine, the Director of Parliamentary CID.
After a meeting with colleagues, Twiine approached Buwembo.
“I believe we have you now,” Twiine said with a smile.
Buwembo explained that if at all they had been looking for him, all they had to do was to call him and he would have brought himself instead of frightening an entire neighbourhood with huge deployments.
Twiine turned to other officers and narrated how Buwembo had almost cost Kato Lubwama his seat in parliament.
“This man is not simple,” Twiine said. “Now he is battling number three of the country.”
When Buwembo asked who the number three was, he turned and looked at him.
“Arent you in a battle with the Speaker of Parliament?”
Buwembo wondered how he could be in a battle with the Speaker yet he wasn’t a member of parliament.
“Do you know how many calls the speaker has made to our boss,” Twiine said, “Let me even call him.”
He picked his cell phone and called a person he claimed was the IGP and informed him before leaving.
At around 2:30am, Twiine came and asked whether he had had anything to eat.
Buwembo said he had not been allowed to access his people. Twiine called a lady and told Buwembo to order for a meal. Buwembo declined noting that he could not trust them to give him safe food given the way they had picked him up.
Instead, he asked for access to his phone to call his wife and lawyers.
Twiine said they had instructions not to allow him access to his phones. He could only offer his phone for him to call those people, Twiine said.
Buwembo said the way he was arrested traumatised him so much that he forgot all the contacts. He didn’t even remember his wives’ numbers.
Initially, they declined. An hour later, they allowed him to call his wife and lawyer.
When he told the wife where he was, she noted that she had seen the operatives along the road to their home while taking their children to school but it had not occurred to her they had come for the husband.
He talked to his lawyer too, who arrived within 30 minutes.
Buwembo’s lawyer asked Twiine what the charges were. Twiine brought out a laptop and played one of the video clips from the press conference they had held at Pope Paul Memorial in which Buwembo had given the Speaker seven days to come out and apologise.
Do you know who that is? Twiine asked, pointing to someone in the video.
“Yes, that is me,” Buwembo responded.
“Are you the one who uttered those statements?” Twiine asked again.
“Officer,” Buwembo said, “even if you like and you have a camera here and you put me in front of the camera, I am ready to repeat exactly what I said from the press conference. The person you are talking about, the Speaker is my servant.
She is paid from the taxpayer’s money and I am a taxpayer.”
Buwembo was after charged with threatening violence against the person of the speaker and detained in Luzira for over 100 days. The charges would later be dropped because the complainant—Speaker Anita Among—never appeared before court. Yet again on September 25 2023, the same Twiine preferred fresh charges—transmitting malicious information against Speaker Among. The charge sheet notes that Buwembo had on September 21 2023 addressed Speaker Anita Among as a Karamajong Iron sheets thief, “well knowing that this was unlawful and intended to injure and ridicule the name of the person of the Rt. Hon speaker Anita Annet Among.” Yet again Buwembo would be detained for 53 days. Again, court found no evidence and acquitted him on September 10, 2023, almost a year later.
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