Maid’s four-year jail term unfair - activists
Jolly Tumuhiirwe
What you need to know:
Uganda Human Rights Commission boss says the term was a miscarriage of justice .
Kampala- Three days after court handed a four-year jail sentence to housemaid Jolly Tumuhiirwe for assaulting a baby, the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) has come out to brand the whole prosecution process a ‘miscarriage of justice’.
According to the Secretary to the Commission, Mr Gordon Mwesigye, the 22-year-old maid should have been prosecuted under the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Act 2012 as she was the best candidate to face torture charges and not assault.
Citing the definition of torture under section 2 of the Act, Mr Mwesigye said the torture law okays prosecution of individuals acting in their private capacity to torture others.
The Act defines torture as any act or omission by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental is intentionally inflicted on a person by or instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of any person whether a public official or other person acting in an official or private capacity.
“As a Commission, we are disappointed that justice has been defeated. This maid should have been charged under the Torture Act in her private capacity,” Mr Mwesigye said while attending a workshop to assess the implementation of the roadmap to the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Act 2012 by various stakeholders organised by UHRC in Kampala on Tuesday.
“When I watched news on Monday night and I saw the maid walking away with just four years, I was disheartened. Even the father of the child said he was satisfied with the four-year jail term, this was just a joke compared to the assault she had meted against the innocent child,” he added.
But human rights lawyer Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi who represented the maid in court reasoned that torture charges that had initially been preferred against Tumuhiirwe could not stand as she was not a government official.
He explained that its only government officials such as police officers who can be charged with torture and not a private individual like his client.
