Left to right: Lawyer James Nangwala, company secretary Susan Wasagali, editor in chief, Wafula Oguttu, writers Frank Nyakairu, Wanyama Wangah and news editor David Ouma Balikowa after the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate's Court equitted the editors in 2001. Photo/File
Twenty six years ago on Monday, three editors of Monitor Publications were summoned by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police as the government commenced an investigation into the matter of a picture that was published in the paper’s May 11, 1999, edition.
The picture depicted men in military fatigues forcefully “shaving” pubic hair off a nude woman. The picture had reportedly been taken in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) barracks in Gulu.
According to The Monitor of May 13, 1999, the letters summoning the editor in chief, Mr Wafula Oguttu, the editor, Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo, and the deputy editor/ news editor, Mr David Ouma Balikowa, to CID headquarters were delivered to The Monitor’s offices in Namuwongo on May 12. They were required to be there at 9am.
“This picture, which depicts a gross violation of human rights by the army, has inevitably necessitated the institution of inquiries against the perpetrators,” the letter signed by acting director CID, Mr Erasmus Opio, said.
Earlier on May 11, the same day that the photograph was published, two security operatives had interviewed Mr Balikowa and in the process revealed that they intended to visit Gulu barracks as part of the investigations.
The newspaper reported that it had on May 12 learnt from different impeccable sources in the military that a selection of senior army officers had held an emergency meeting at State House Entebbe on the day the photograph was published to map out plans for an even wider probe.
The meeting reportedly agreed that it would dispatch a team to Gulu barracks to immediately commence investigations and later brief President Museveni.
The newspaper further reported that its sources had made it known that the State House meeting, which was reportedly chaired by a colonel in the UPDF who was known to work closely with the President on security matters, was characterised by extreme tension.
Katumba denial
Amid all those movements, on May 12, Brig Edward Katumba Wamala, the commander of the 4th Division of the UPDF, issued a statement calling for an immediate and conclusive investigation into what he described as a “barbaric act”.
“The barbaric act depicted could not have been carried out in a barracks as thickly populated as Gulu and go unnoticed. It would not be difficult to come across witnesses to such an act,” Brig Wamala’s statement read in part.
“I, therefore, call on the women activist groups, the Uganda Human Rights Commission and any other party interested in the protection of human rights and dignity to carry out an in-depth investigation into this matter. The barracks gates will be open to all investigation bodies with unlimited access to any personnel in the barracks,” it added.
Brig Wamala vowed “to resign his position in the UPDF if it is proved that such a barbaric act was carried out under my nose”. He also asked for proof from The Monitor that the picture is authentic.
Conflicting accounts
The talk of a probe into matters around the photograph came hot on the heels of conflicting responses from sections of the army about the authenticity of the photograph and who the men depicted therein were.
On May 12, State-owned New Vision newspaper quoted “unconfirmed reports” saying the uniforms that the men in the photographs were clad in were not of the UPDF, but the Zimbabwean army.
Several other army officers claimed that the uniforms belonged to the Congolese army. The newspaper reported that Brig Joram Mugume, the deputy army commander, was steadfast in his denial that the men in the photograph were UPDF soldiers.
“Our position remains the same, those soldiers are not ours,” Brig Mugume was quoted to have said.
Brig Mugume said he was “surprised that a meeting was held in State House” to establish a probe team. He, in his denial, reasoned that security meetings held at State House were always chaired by the President.
Lt Ba-Hoku Barigye, the army’s assistant public relations officer, also denied knowledge of a probe and maintained that the culprits of the sordid act were not men of the UPDF.
Ms Hope Kivengere, the president’s press secretary, told this newspaper that she “was not aware” of a probe and pleaded that she be spared further questions on the matter because “those are army things”. Nevertheless, like other people who the newspaper had talked to, Ms Kivengere was confident that the men in the photograph were not of the UPDF “since the uniform was not like the army’s”.
Security visit
The newspaper reported that on the evening of April 28, 1999, when the controversial photograph, which had reportedly been taken in January the same year, first came into the newspaper’s possession, two security operatives – Ms Victoria Nalongo Musisi, the director in charge of the media at the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), and Wanyama, from the President’s Office – visited the newspaper’s offices, saying they had heard that the newspaper was in possession of a photograph that could paint the army in bad light.
The duo requested to “discuss” it. They asked that the photograph not be published. The newspaper reported that the security officers seemed to have been acting on a tip-off from one of their informers who, according to indications, had been planted among the publication’s employees to spy for them for some time.
Lakony steps forward
A few days after the photograph was published, a 24-year-old woman, Ms Candida Lakony, an unemployed resident of Pece, Gulu Town, came forward to say she was the woman shown in the picture pinned down by soldiers, one of whom was seen shaving her pubic hair.
Mr Lakony claimed that the man who was seen shaving her was her former soldier boyfriend, Cpl Nelson Kisale, who was at the time based in Gulu barracks. Two legislators, including Ms Winnie Banyima, took her to see President Museveni. They argued that she needed to tell her story and seek the President’s protection as her life was likely to be in danger.
Charged
Ms Lakony was kept at State House for two days, but she was later handed over to police before she was arraigned before the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court, where she was charged with giving false information.
During her trial, a witness told the court on August 17, 1999, that her pubic hair had been used during rituals carried out to end the war that was raging in northern Uganda at the time. The witness claimed that the rituals that were conducted in August 1998 had been carried out at the bottom of a hill at the common border of Uganda and Sudan on the instructions of the father of rebel priestess, Alice Lakwena. Lakwena, the leader of the Holy Spirit Movement, passed away on January 18, 2007, in a refugee camp in Kenya
Convicted
On October 19, 1999, Buganda Road Chief Magistrate Andrew Bashaija ruled that Ms Lakony was not the nude woman in the photograph as she had claimed.
The court added that her former boyfriend, Kisale, was not the man in uniform who was shaving the pubic hair of the woman. Magistrate Bashaija sentenced Candida to 12 months in jail for lying to police.
Editors tried
On November 9, 1999, the trial of The Monitor editors Oguttu, Onyango-Obbo and Balikowa on charges of sedition and publication of false news commenced at the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court.
The editors were, however, acquitted on March 6, 2001, after Grade I Magistrate Joshua Maruku found them innocent.
Magistrate Maruku ruled that the State had failed to prove the purported intention because the State was not synonymous with the President.
The court noted that the picture was about individual soldiers of the UPDF and that the opinion of the court would have been the same even if the picture was not of men of the UPDF.
