Evidence points to routine use of torture by Ugandan government

Denmark’s Ambassador to Uganda was away when his wife looked out the window and saw a young man fall from the sky and land on her garden. She made a frantic call to her husband, Stig Barlyng, right, who immediately sped home to his residence in a posh suburb in Kampala. But by the time Barlyng arrived home, the guards from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) headquarters next door had already overpowered Barlyng´s guard and recaptured their escapee. (17-MAY-08)

Written by Wendy Glauser*, this article was first published yesterday by World Politics Review. It has been edited and prepared for publication here by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

“I went next door and I started yelling a bit, to put it mildly,” recalls Barlyng, who is months away from wrapping up his ambassadorship. Barlyng had reason to be upset — “the presence of torture in Uganda was handed to me on a silver platter,” he says.

Though not picked up by any international media outlets when it occurred in early 2006, the 30-foot jump of Ronald Kasekende onto Barlyng´s compound was reported in the country´s independent daily. For six months, the newspaper reported, Kaskende, a university student and an alleged spy for the opposition, was “severely beaten and subject to other forms of torture” in hopes that he would release the names of his accomplices. Shortly after his escape attempt, exposed to diplomatic and press circles, Kasekende was officially charged with treason and detained in an actual prison. Today, he still lives in Kampala and is wary of speaking to the media. When asked how his experiences in an illegal detention center have affected him, he only had this to say: “I tell my friends the hardware is the same but the software is all messed up.”

Working with a weekly Ugandan magazine called The Independent in the matatu- and moped-jammed Kampala, a colleague and I interviewed more than a dozen Ugandans who claimed to have been tortured in undocumented detention centers. A few of those we talked to were released or escaped as recently as late last year. They spoke of daily beatings. They said soldiers poured water over their mouths and noses. Some said they were ordered to stand with bricks tied to their testicles.

Carole Nalulue, director of complaints, investigations and legal services at the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), notes that “there have been some severe torture cases where people have been rendered disabled or impotent because of torture.” In 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the UHRC lodged 264 complaints from torture victims. The biggest perpetrators, according to UHRC, were the police, followed by the government army. And yet, Uganda remains a “donor darling” with about 40 percent of its budget pouring in from donor countries giddy over the nation´s success in fighting AIDS.

It´s not as if the torture cases are unknown. In 2004, Human Rights Watch released its first investigative report on the subject, titled “State of Pain.” In the summer of 2006, the New York-based rights group alleged a man named Abdu Semugenyi died while begging for water after being electrocuted in a Kampala “safehouse,” as Uganda´s torture chambers are euphemistically termed. And leading up to Uganda´s hosting of the Commonwealth Summit in November 2007, London´s Daily Telegraph quoted torture victim Patrick Okiring, who says he was kept in a safehouse for a month. “They tied my hands behind my back and emptied a 25-liter jerrican of water over my head until I could not breath,” he told the U.K. newspaper.

Protected by the lack of laws criminalizing torture, the Ugandan government fiercely denies illegally detaining or violently interrogating its citizens. “There are no safehouses in Uganda,” says the minister for Internal Security, Ruhakana Rugunda, left. The army spokesman, Paddy Ankunda, responded to torture accusations by saying, “It´s not torture, it´s interrogation. We have psychosocial experts to interrogate using acceptable international methods.”

Seemingly taking them at their word, none of Uganda´s donors, including generous Denmark, have cut aid money to the East African country as a result of torture allegations. And after two decades as president, Yoweri Museveni, who slashed constitutional term limits so he could run again in 2006, already seems to be gearing up for an election in 2011. According to Barlyng, the torturing of political dissidents is overlooked because the government has brought peace and prosperity to the once war-torn country. “In the context of independent Uganda, only about 20 or so years have been relatively calm and the rest have been one horrible mess of violence,” he says, harkening back to the days of Idi Amin. “People prefer the stability and relative safety of today and so they´re less concerned about torture.”

Frank Kihehere was running a timber business in Northern Uganda when he was picked up by police in November 2004. For the next three weeks, he says, he was tortured and accused of belonging to a rebel group called the People´s Redemption Army (PRA). “They would get this rim from a spare tire and they would make you sit and they would put it over your shoulders and they would stand on it,” he recalls.

Kihehere says he was held with 40 other captives in a cement room at the CMI headquarters beside Barlyng´s home. At night, he says, the captives would be individually called for interrogations, which usually lasted a couple hours but could continue until the morning. “They would take one and they don´t bring him back so you think maybe he has died then they come and tell you it´s your turn,” he says. When his denials especially angered an interrogator, Kihehere says a soldier put his gun in his mouth and cocked it and told him he was going to shoot him.

While 12 of the 23 PRA suspects confessed to belonging to the rebel group and signed amnesty agreements, Kihehere says they only signed under the duress of torture. Refusing to confess, Kihehere was officially charged with treason in December 2005 and remained in prison until August of last year. He claims the PRA was concocted by the government in order to discredit Uganda´s opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, who was also charged with treason in connection with the PRA in late 2004.

Kihehere is still awaiting trial in Kampala and he says he continues to have nightmares about his torture. “I see myself being beaten, I see myself bleeding. I have dreams filled with death, war, what . . .”

Despite denials by the government, human rights groups in Kampala are convinced safehouses exist. “They keep changing the locations, but they´re there,” says Faith Bothuwok, a trauma counselor at the African Centre for Torture Victims (ACTV). Bothuwok says some of the people who say they were tortured in safehouses “come limping, others come with rotten wounds, others come when their nails have been plucked off by pliers.” Rose Karugongo-Segawa at the Uganda Human Rights Commission also says she´s “certain” that safe houses exist.

But proving their existence is tricky. Victims are often blindfolded when they´re taken to safehouses, which survivors allege exist not only at the military headquarters but throughout Kampala. And, according to Karugongo-Segawa, those who are released or escape are too traumatized to seek legal reparations or too afraid to draw attention to themselves. “People who have been detained for years and then released without even getting a trial often don´t file a complaint because they fear they´ll be tortured again,” she explains.

The UHRC tribunal hears torture cases when a plaintiff has enough evidence to go to trial, but the case is put against the attorney general rather than the individual soldiers or policemen responsible. “I think if the individuals were being held responsible, that would go a long way in preventing it,” says Karungongo-Segawa. “Now they do it and they know the attorney general will represent them.” While victims can, outside of the UHRC tribunal, bring cases against their perpetrators, Uganda has no specific law against torture, notes Karungongo-Segawa. In the criminal courts, torturers can only be charged with a more minor crime, such as assault or causing bodily harm. For years, the UHRC has lobbied the government to criminalize torture.

A couple of months ago, two colleagues and I cruised slowly down a back, dirt road in the Kampala suburb of Ntinda. Godfrey Masaba, right, a 24-year-old army deserter and self-proclaimed safehouse survivor, was navigating from the back seat, craning his neck out the window. “That´s the house,” he said, pointing to a bungalow in the valley below. Masaba says he was detained in the house for a month for threatening to reveal secrets that could devastate the government´s reputation. As a soldier, he claims he was part of a “special force unit” that posed as Lord´s Resistance Army rebels in Uganda´s north, killing and mutilating suspected rebel supporters.

The safe house in the Kampala suburb of Ntinda where Godfrey Masaba says he was detained (The Independent)

Masaba says that President Museveni personally interrogated him about his grave betrayal, and afterward ordered him into a safehouse. “The president said, ´This boy is not acting alone,´” Masaba remembers. For a month, Masaba says he was interrogated and tortured in the Ntinda safehouse. One time, he says, he was forced to hold himself up with a rope tied to the ceiling and hover over a board of nails. Masaba says he eventually escaped the safe house by overpowering a drunk guard.

Army spokesman Paddy Ankunda denies Masaba´s allegations of torture and military misconduct and claims Masaba is “a very dangerous man” who has been telling lies about the Ugandan government in Kenya and the Central African Republic. Acting on a tip that we were interviewing Masaba, plainclothes security operatives staked out The Independent´s office in late March. In a case of mistaken identity, the office´s gatekeeper was unceremoniously thrown in the back of a Landcruiser as he walked down the street outside of the office. He was released a few hours later. Masaba escaped to Rwanda shortly after the botched raid.

According to Barlyng, the Ugandan government can get away with incidents of illegal apprehension and detention because its donors also break the rules when it comes to interrogation techniques and imprisonment. “This country has strong relations with Iran and the U.S., which is quite good at working with a certain kind of liberalness when it comes to torture,” he says. The United States gave Uganda close to $200 million last year, nearly 10 percent of the government´s annual budget.

Alleged safehouse survivor Frank Kihehere argues Museveni, a staunch Christian and an established leader in the volatile East African region, is too important an ally in the war on terror for torture allegations to get in the way. “As long as this man is killing Ugandans but he goes to Bush and he serves Bush´s interests, nothing will happen to him,” he says.

*Wendy Glauser is a Canadian journalist who recently spent four months reporting from Uganda.