Nalufenya is a spirit, not place; so you can’t ‘just’ close it down
If you are one of those excited by the news last week that a debate in the Uganda Police Force is taking place regarding the closure of the now infamous Nalufenya Police detention and torture facility in Jinja, you need to think again.
Naturally when there is a change of guard in any establishment, the new team rushes to distinguish itself from the old, especially if the old one was cast in bad light. The new kids on the block will hit the ground running to practically announce a new dawn.
Under the previous Inspector General of Police (IGP), Gen Kale Kayihura, the Uganda Police Force (UPF), had acquired a terrible image of being a crime infested institution.
Officers were recorded in cases of murder, rape, theft, hiring out guns, protecting criminals and beating up Opposition supporters to break up their rallies. But their signature project was Nalufenya.
The gruesome pictures of Geoffrey Byamukama, the Mayor of Kamwenge with knee caps plucked out, shocked the nation. The same happened when 22 suspects in the murder of former police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi, were brought to court with fresh wounds caused by beatings and electrocution in Nalufenya and other police facilities. Each was awarded Shs80 million by court for their sufferings at the hands of the police.
Even more disturbing was that almost no one is known to have been reprimanded by the police for these barbaric acts.
Silence as they say is consent. Torturing suspects by plucking out their nails, suspending heavy objects from their private parts, denying them sleep, beating them, and keeping them in rooms with water for days on end are some of the awful interrogation methods reported from Nalufenya and other facilities run by security agencies.
Some Muslims have made claims about being forced to eat pork and take alcohol; things which are against their religious beliefs. You get to the point when the police remain aloof.
That is why it sounds more like fake news when you hear that such a facility like Nalufenya may be shut down. The reason being that torture is the lifeline of a police force like Uganda’s where nearly all known factors that bedevil a police force are alive and kicking.
Many of the officers supposed to gather intelligence and evidence are not very well trained. They are poorly paid and lack motivation. They do not have the facilities to help them, including basics like transport to scenes of crime.
The forensic analytical capacity is equally wanting and yet very vital in criminal investigations of any nature.
So when faced with suspects and the need to deliver, the best they can do is to force the suspects into ‘confessing’ to crimes which in many cases they never committed.
So the police under IGP John Martins Okoth Ochola may decide to close down Nalufenya in a bid to break the past. But if it happens without practically addressing the reasons that make torture a ‘necessity,’ it will be the equivalent of burning a witch doctor’s shrine without extinguishing the evil spirits and powers he uses to spook his victims.
Nalufenya is but a torture chamber, which may be replicated (and is actually being replicated) in other places like safe houses and police stations.
In case a decision has not been made, it is better the Nalufenya centre is left open and instead address the causes of torture with the aim of eliminating them.
Anything short of this is playing to the gallery.
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This gossip is for only the eyes of the new IGP Martins Okoth Ochola. At around 19.03 on December 21, 1988 Pan Am Flight 103, was blown up by a plastic bomb over Lockebie in Scotland.
It spread the pieces over an area of 850 square miles! More than 1,000 police officers were deployed to gather four million pieces of evidence from this vast area .
The instructions for the officers were to pick anything that was not a plant or a rock. They worked day and night for months. The complex investigations took the spies to several countries and pieces of evidence to a myriad of laboratories in the USA, France, England and Scotland.
They visited a shop in Malta because one of the pieces of clothes that had traces of a chemical suspected of being used to make the bomb still had the label of the shop. They eventually got a conviction after years of toiling.
Just imagine if this happened here and God forbid; we would have two options. Pray to God for those who died. Secondly, pull out the pliers and electric cables to squeeze confessions out of the suspects.
Nalufenya is a spirit not a place.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.
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Twitter:@nsengoba
