Dead or alive? Curious case  of NUP’s missing supporters

On June 3, 2019, John-Bosco Kibalama, a trained accountant who was an acolyte of National Unity Platform (NUP) leader, Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu alias Bobi Wine, went missing. 
The details of his abduction remain vague after his car was found abandoned on Kampala-Gayaza Road by police officers. He is among scores of NUP supporters who may either be held incommunicado in ungazetted detention facilities or may be dead, as some relatives fear. 

LISTEN: John Bosco Kibalama: A family's tale of missing breadwinner

These disappearances were the subject of a recent probe by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) whose chairperson, Mariam Wangadya, on October 10 revealed that files of 18 missing persons had been closed.
“It will be futile for us to keep these files open when the people provided to us as the next of kin […] are not interested in these cases,” Ms Wangadya said. 

In a riposte during a news conference held on October 12, Monica Nabukeera, Kibalama’s wife, disclosed that she has “never received any letter or phone call or message requesting me to respond to the issues concerning my husband’s disappearance”.
Ms Nabukeera also revealed that they have visited several detention centres and “have even been conned several times in the hope of finding him”.
Before his disappearance, Kibalama was vying for the Busiro North Parliamentary race. A NUP bastion, Kibalama was widely expected to give the incumbent, Dennis Ssozi Galabuzi, the junior Luweero minister then, a run for his money. 

In February, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja courted controversy when she revealed that Kibalama—whom she described as “a hard-core criminal”—was detained in 2022 for allegedly killing police officers. Red flags immediately shot up. How could a man who was abducted in 2019 be responsible for a crime committed in 2022? Did he escape from detention?

“What was important to us was that we needed Kibalama to be arraigned in court so that he could be tried for the criminal offence he was being held for. I later on engaged the prime minister […] and she did not seem bothered and communication broke down,” the wife revealed. 

Nabbanja standoff
Rancour filled the air inside the cloistered hall of Parliament during the plenary recently when the Leader of Opposition, Mathias Mpuuga said, “I asked the prime minister that I escort her to go see Kibalama and she needs 30 days? I put it to her that the blood of Kibalama is on your hands.” 

Nabbanja sprang towards the dispatch box to defend herself. “Is it in order for my brother to keep insinuating that I have the blood of Kibalama when I am not a security person,” she retorted. 
Many of these contradictions and denials fly in the face of UHRC ability to undertake a legitimate probe of the missing. Joel Ssenyonyi, the spokesperson for NUP, says Prime Minister Nabbanja should be treated as a “witness”.

The Nakawa West lawmaker said: “Why doesn’t Wangadya reach out to Nabbanja and say, ‘you made this statement, where is this person’?”
Dorothy Najjuka, whose brother—Vincent Nalumonso—was aged 27 at the time of his disappearance after unidentified men abducted him on December 1, 2020, near Bugolobi Market where he fixed motorcycles, is flummoxed by UHRC.

“We brought evidence—his National ID. Can you get a National ID for a person who doesn’t exist? He has to exist. He left children who ask where he is,” she said.
Alex Bukumunhe, the acting public affairs manager at the Commission, however, insists that UHRC is yet to find any supporting evidence. 
Curiously, though, in its report on the missing NUP supporters, the Commission recommended that the House Committee on Human Rights, which conducted a parallel probe, publish its report.

“If the people have no trust in us the civilian authority, maybe they have more confidence in an institution where they elect people to represent them, that is Parliament,” Mr Bukumunhe said, adding, “That institution also carried out investigations into this matter and we are dismayed that the report has not been made public.”

Ambiguous loss
Per UHRC’s findings, there are 18 missing people, including John Bosco Kibalama, Vincent Nalumonso, John Ddamulira, Martin Lukwago, Godfrey Kisembo and Hassan Mubiru.
Ddamulira was reportedly beaten severely and bled profusely on the day he was taken, according to those he was arrested with, including his son, Alvin Ddamulira. Before they were released later in the night, they heard him yell for help, begging for water. 

“The men blindfolded and then drove all five around in a van for several hours while beating them. Eventually, that night, the men stopped at an unmarked building where they beat John Ddamulira some more,” reads the report released in March 2022 by the Human Rights Watch, a US-based organisation. 

Ddamulira has been missing since December 2020 and the Commission claims that efforts to search for him in detention centres and an order of habeas corpus issued by the High Court have proved futile thus far. As have efforts to locate Godfrey Kisembo.  

“My husband was arrested on February 12, 2021. I only came to learn of the news that Master Kisembo had been arrested. I asked myself why would they arrest my husband?” his wife Justina Nakula revealed, adding, “I came to hear that he tore the President’s poster. I asked myself why did he tear the President’s picture? They said it is the reason he was abducted. I went to school to find out. His colleagues at the school said that he did not tear the picture.”

Such families of missing persons are dealing with what psychologists term as “ambiguous loss”. Unable to grieve because there are no remains for which to mourn and bury, those whose loved ones are missing also can’t entirely give up hope of being reunited with the missing. It is this unsettling equilibrium they develop.

Under the Estates of Missing Persons (Management) Act Cap 159, a missing person is a person who disappears from Uganda without making provision for the administration of their estate and investigations have shown that their whereabouts are unknown. According to Section 20 of the Act, after a period of three years, such a person is presumed dead.

Back to the future?
Four months after seizing power in 1986, President Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) government established a Commission of Inquiry to look into the cycle of violence that plagued the country since the post-colonial era.

The Commission’s final report titled “Pearl of Blood” delivered in October 1994 detailed grim tales by survivors or their families and macabre accounts by some of the actors in the armies of Obote and Amin 1962 to 1970, 1971 to 1979, and 1980 to July 1985, respectively.
“The exact number of Ugandans that have lost their lives at the hands of government agents and agencies since independence, is impossible to establish,” it read in part, adding, “The murder of individuals, mass murders, and arbitrary deprivation of life or extra judicial executions is a violation of the right to life, one of the most fundamental rights and freedoms of an individual.”

For instance, under Amin the army and security outfits that operated through loose command structures wielded immense powers. 

Ritualistic inquiries? 
Paradoxically, in 1974, president Amin doubling as Commander-in Chief and Minister of Defence, constituted a Commission of Inquiry to look into the disappearance of people—their identities, establish whether they are dead or alive— since his takeover on January 25, 1971.

Pointedly, the Commission detailed that: “The location of many military barracks within or close to large urban population centres greatly contributed to human rights violations by the military. One of the most notorious barracks where many Ugandans lost their lives at the hands of Amin’s soldiers, was Makindye. After the military coup of January, 1971, the barracks was turned into the headquarters of the Military Police and has remained so ever since.”

According to the 1994 “Pearl of Blood” report, the army, police, state security agencies and the Executive were central in the perpetuation of the cycle of violence. From 1962 to 1986—to date— torture has been a prominent tool in the repertoire of tactics by the successive regimes against opponents, both real and perceived.

“The degree of brutality and cruelty that the victims were subjected to is often unbelievable. Few survived to tell the tale,” the report notes.
Amin’s notorious State Research Centre (SRC), housed at Kyaggwe Road, Nakasero, next to State House, according to the Oder report, accounts for the largest number of cold-blooded murders in Uganda’s post-independence history.  The building housing the SRC had an underground tunnel connecting it to the nearby president’s lodge.

Terse details
One of the former SRC directors, a witness in the commission hearings, Lt Col Francis Itabuka, was reluctant to say anything on the issue of people being killed at Nakasero—sometimes saying ‘no’, and then changing to ‘very few.’ He maintained that: ‘I have never seen a dead body at State Research but what I know is sometimes they used to kill some people’.”

According to the report, murders occurred in virtually all army and security institutions during this period. 
“A civilian who was detained in an army barracks, rarely emerged alive from there. Civilian relatives of soldiers under detention or already murdered, were a frequent target of the murderous army. To investigate the whereabout or fate of any detainee often meant death or torture for the investigator. This probably explains why many Ugandans preferred to quietly mourn when a relative disappeared.”

Amin’s Public Safety Unit, the report notes, did not stop at torturing a victim until he was hospitalised or dumped into the mortuary, but also ‘followed’ the body until they were sure the victim was completely dead. 
“They left instructions with mortuary attendants that whoever touched the relevant body would also be killed.”