Armed men patrol downtown Kampala during protests following the arrest of Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, in November 2021. PHOTO/FILE
“People speak sometimes about the ‘bestial’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts; no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel,” Russian essayist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in this 1880 novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
The passage has been interpreted variously, but in essence, to mean that while wild animal cruelty is an innate attribute, for mankind, cruelty is often intended and purposeful. The 1994 October report, Pearl of Blood, of the Commission of Inquiry into the cruelty suffered by Ugandans, reinforces the same that the acts were purposeful, for among others, exact revenge, deliberately inflict pain on people of other tribes, and out of ignorance by both the perpetrators and victims.
Since Independence, the country has been oscillating between a tumultuous turn of events; from the 1964 Nakulabye incident to the 1966 crisis, to President Idi Amin, whose promising early years turned notorious, especially through the notorious State Research Bureau, to post-Amin insecurity and eventually the armed rebellion launched by Mr Yoweri Museveni. These events left a trail of despair.
The eight-member Commission of Inquiry was announced in 1986 by then Minister of Justice and Attorney General Joseph Mulenga, who pledged that the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) government “would not treat the findings in the same way” that past presidents Milton Obote and Idi Amin’s administrations had. The latter had put in place commissions of inquiries into missing persons, only to disregard them. Justice Mulenga, who died in August 2012, further pledged that the commission’s findings would receive the government’s “maximum attention with a view to taking action, and where applicable, necessary implementation.”
In an article published by the New York Times with the headline ‘Rebel Sworn in as Uganda President’, Mr Museveni, who addressed the anxious nation on the steps of Parliament, appeared confident and jocular as he spoke at length without notes.
He laid out the 10-Point Programme, the policy diagnosis for the broken country, which included restoration of democracy, restoration of security of all persons in Uganda and their properties; consolidation of national unity and elimination of all sectarianism; defence and consolidation on National Independence and elimination of all forms of corruption in public life.
At the commencement, the NRA/M largely appeared to embrace the ten-point programme. Mr Museveni’s first Cabinet was a blend of politicians across the political aisle. The government was frugal in its expenditure, and the President said that he wouldn’t purchase expensive furniture from the West but buy it locally, and Cabinet ministers drove the modest Nissan Laurel vehicles. The economy grew rapidly and Mr Museveni would later be touted by US President Bill Clinton as one of the new breed of African leaders. But that was nearly 40 years ago.
Cycle of violence
According to the Pearl of Blood, the Commission of Inquiry went to all parts of Uganda and sat at many district headquarters to hear testimonies of victims of human rights abuse starting in 1962 through the successive regimes. The Obote I regime was characterised by, first, suspicion and mistrust amongst the political leadership of Uganda, caused mainly by fear of domination of some tribes by others. Then came the conflict between Buganda and Bunyoro developed over the ‘lost counties’, especially when Buganda lost a referendum on ownership of the counties and decided to oppose the transfer of the two Counties to Bunyoro. Then problems erupted in the army, and the ensuing chaos cascaded into the 1966 crisis until his overthrow in 1971 by President Amin.
According to the report, once Amin consolidated his position in power by, among others, mass murder of his enemies and then recruiting Kakwa, Nubian, Lugbara and Sudanese soldiers in large numbers in security agencies. Amin’s immediate and most serious opposition sprang from the Lango and Acholi sections of the army and he dealt with it in a primitive and ruthless manner.
“By 1973, the Flying Squad, a police unit commanded by Daniel W. J. Mulemezi, had collected over 15,000 bodies in and around Kampala, excluding soldiers killed in the barracks all over the country,” the report reads in part.
The senseless terror continued unchecked. The 1974 government report on missing persons blamed some of the disappearances on the exiled former President Obote.
Throughout Amin’s rule, all categories of human rights violations took place. Then came the short-lived governments of Godfrey Binaisa, Yusuf Lule, Paulo Muwanga, Obote II and Tito Okello’s Military Council, which “appealed to all fighting forces, including the NRA, to join” in forming a unitary government in vain.
The NRA captured power on January 26 and was sworn in on 29. According to the Pearl of Blood, the violation of human rights in post-independence Uganda has not been solely due to the weakness or absence of constitutional and other legal guarantees of human rights.
Rather, the commission opined: “A country may have the best written Bill of Rights in the world, but if the state organs and institutions, leaders at all levels, and every individual in the country are not committed and do not pay serious attention to them, human rights as so guaranteed are not worth the paper(s) they are written on.” Pointedly, the report notes that the army, police, state security agencies and the Executive have been central in the perpetuation of the cycle of violence, which “fact is well attested to throughout the evidence given before the Commission.”
As such, the report concluded that the exact number of Ugandans that have lost their lives at the hands of government agents and agencies since independence is impossible to establish. “The murder of individuals, mass murders, 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 the individual; which is stated in the Constitution of Uganda and international human rights instruments, to which Uganda is a party,” the report reads.
Some of the torture marks inflicted on the back of novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija in 2022. PHOTO/ FILE
Faces, hands of evil
According to the report, witness after witness gave testimony to the commission about the dreadful murder of their immediate or extended family members, friends, name it, while the degree of brutality and cruelty that the victims were subjected to was often unbelievable. One witness, Sentamu, a prison officer at Luzira, recalled the incitement, a speech by President Obote leading to the attack of the Kabaka’s palace (Lubiri) in 1966. He told the commission that the President had earlier made a threatening speech while at Soroti. President Obote, Mr Sentamu recalled, said: “I warn you people of Soroti, if you behave like a certain tribe you know very well, I shall not hesitate at all, I will send my boys to destroy both you and your property; I repeat, I will send my boys to destroy both your lives and property I say this for God and my country ------ A good Muganda is a dead one.”
The speech was followed by the attack on Lubiri, where many victims were put to death by hammers and crowbars, while others were electrocuted or suffocated to death. Witness James Rubakuba stated to the commission about seeing piles of dead bodies being ferried from Lubiri to the Luzira Prison Cemetery, where they were buried in mass graves.
Sentamu revealed he applied armed force to have the injured separated from the dead/dying, before taking them to Mulago hospital. “These incidents contributed to a long-lasting relationship of hatred between Buganda and Obote’s government, which culminated in civil war in the Luwero triangle during Obote’s second government, in 1981 - 1985. Many Baganda, let alone other Ugandans, were murdered during that civil war,” the report notes. During Amin’s regime, the army and security agencies, which operated loose command structures, wielded immense powers and by impulse, determined the fate of hundreds who were killed or disappeared and never to be seen again.
The current Toyota Hiace van, christened “drone” usually without a number plate whose occupants are men clad in black attire, is what the Peugeot was during the Amin and Obote II days, and the word disappearance was a euphemism meant for those who did not make it back home after they went missing. The sight of a Peugeot, then, like the drone, today, instilled so much fear and ominously sent a warning to its victims. Like in many cases today, the command structure of the security organs under Amin and Obote II remained opaque, making accountability extremely hard to trace for the kidnapped or bringing the perpetrators to book.
The once powerful head of the State Research Bureau, Lt Col Francis Itabuka, told the commission in 1987 that while he headed the notorious body, his deputy, Maj Farouk Minawa, had more powers than him.
Amin’s other trusted lieutenants against whom no action could be taken included Maliyamungu Malera, Ali Towilli, Bbirikadd, and Captain Juma Ali ‘Butabika.
Witness David Cheptok P’Somgen, the Inspector General of Police, testified how Amin’s regime harassed the police for making reports about human rights abuses. He said in 1974, the former Minister of Commerce in the first Obote regime, Mr William Kalema, was abducted and made to disappear. However, police received information that Kalema’s car was sighted at Kisoro, crossing the border into Zaire, and that one of the persons seen in the car was Hassan, a personnel of the Presidential Escort Unit. “The Police submitted the report to Col Obitre Gama, the Minister of Internal Affairs, who forwarded it to Amin. Consequently, Amin summoned Senior Police Officers and other staff of the Ministry to a meeting at the International Conference Centre. The Military Police were deployed in the balcony of the Conference Centre. In his address, Amin castigated the Police and the whole Ministry of Internal Affairs, calling their personnel liars, mainly because of the report about the disappearance of Kalema and his car. He also attacked the Minister, Obitre Gama, who was later sacked.
Thereafter, the effectiveness of the police was greatly reduced. Many policemen were killed and others removed from their positions,” the commission report noted. During the post-Amin era until 1986, the report details that the army and soldiers, as in the past, “continued to enjoy protection from justice and behaved as if they were above the law.” “The police continued to be inactive or passive.
The Commission found that since independence, soldiers often contemptuously referred to the police as ‘women’, ridiculing their role in society. This attitude grew out of an atmosphere in which emphasis shifted from the rule of law, enforceable by the civil police, to the use of the gun as the source of authority and power.” Dr Matayo Lukakaba Kakande, then a pathologist at Mulago hospital, testified about this failure to subject the military to police crime investigation.
He gave as an example the Katwe police station being very close to Makindye Military Barracks, and yet the police could not investigate the countless atrocities that were committed against thousands of civilians inside barracks throughout the period. Throughout the 113-page commission of inquiry report, only the actors changed but the script largely remained the same or even worse through the successive regimes.
To be continued….
