Three women arrested for protesting police brutality compensation delay

Police in Kampala Metropolitan Area (KMP) on Friday arrested three women on charges of inciting violence after they staged a protest at their headquarters in Kampala over delayed compensation for the Force's brutality.
According to Kampala Metropolitan Police deputy spokesperson, Mr Luke Owoyesigyire, the three suspects who are currently detained at Jinja road police station are Nana Namata Mwafirika, Phiona Arinatwe and Night Asara.
They were arrested after police foiled their peaceful demonstration at Naguru police headquarter in protest of delayed compensation from police over brutality.

“Police at Jinja road station is holding three female suspects on allegations of inciting violence. The three ladies gathered today around our police headquarters in Naguru in show of what they called dissatisfaction on this women’s day,” Mr Owoyesigyire told this publication on Friday.
“They staged a demonstration but police responded and they were taken to Jinja road police station. We are only appealing to them that such demonstrations are unlawful since it is at a security installation where day-to-today security matters take place,” he added.

According to the letter seen by this publication the suspects had on Thursday notified police prior to Friday’s demonstration.
However, Mr Owoyesigyire emphasized that the suspects had started inviting members of the public to join them which prompted the law enforcers to take swift measures to avert any likely mass demonstration at the police premises.
“We have a lot of equipment kept in such a security facility and it is very unfortunate that the suspects were trying to incite the members of the general public to join them and that is why police had to intervene,” he said.
Before the arrest, Ms Namata told journalists that in 2019, the high court ordered police to compensate her with Shs43 million following a case in which she sued the Force for brutalizing her.
However, she’s yet to be compensated. 

 “Police torture took away my rights as a woman because I lost my uterus to their tortures. I am here to demand for justice .....police should honour court decisions and pay because they were convicted for human rights violation,” Ms Namata said.
“We have nothing to celebrate because the police has continued to brutalize women day by day. How can we continue to celebrate Women’s Day when we lost parts of our bodies to police brutality,” she added.

Another suspect, Ms Asara also expressed concern over delayed compensation saying: “police has used millions to go to Katakwi [District] for women’s day national day celebrations and we also see billions of money being misused in Parliament, why has the government failed to compensate us? Yet we lost almost everything in the hands of police brutality.”

The 2022 Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) report on the state of human rights and freedoms in the country revealed that police was leading in violating human rights of Ugandans, where out of 691 complaints registered by the commission, 411 were lodged against police, followed by private individuals with 147 complaints while complaints against UPDF were 96 in the same year.