Prime
Pardoning of 19 NUP supporters shines light on those still missing
NUP secretary general David Lewis Rubongoya (third left) with the family members of NUP missing persons in Kampala recently. PHOTO/ MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
What you need to know:
- Ms Olivia Lutaaya and 18 NUP supporters were pardoned by President Museveni after being sentenced for treachery and unlawful possession of explosives.
- Their release, however, highlights lingering concerns over the unresolved disappearances of other NUP supporters from Uganda’s tumultuous election campaigns, writes Frederic Musisi.
Ms Monica Nabukeera was about to give in to the possibility that her husband, John Bosco Kibalama, might have died in the hands of one of the security agencies when in early 2023 the Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja admitted publicly that he was in the hands of the state.
“Abducted on June 3, 2019 from Kanyanya...but we are fortunate that he was traced and was arrested in October (2022) in Kakiri. He is one of those believed to have killed police officers in Kiboga and other places,Ms Nabbanja told journalists at Parliament.
There are several security agencies curved out of police and the army; the notable ones being Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI),Joint Anti-Terrorism Taskforce (JATT), Internal Security Organisation (ISO), Special Forces Command (SFC), Directorate of Crime Intelligence, among others, operating through a loose command structure.
For instance, as anxiety over kidnapping of civilians by armed men driving in numberless vans christened ‘drones’ intensified between late 2019 and 2021, police often feigned ignorance on the matter.
The victims’relatives often accused police of shirking their responsibility to investigate whenever a case of missing person was reported. At various press conferences,the police and army spokespersons, respectively, denied knowledge of the whereabouts of the missing persons.
What followed the admission that Kibalama was in the hands of the state was a war of words between Ms Nabbanja and the then Leader of Opposition (LoP), Mr Mathias Mpuuga, after the former attempted to walk back on her statements.
Mr Mpuuga was removed by his party as LoP in December 2023 and replaced by Nakawa West MP Joel Ssenyonyi,who has equally remained vocal about the plight of missing National Unity Platform (NUP) supporters since.
For Ms Nabukeera, the little hope initially induced by the country’s eighth top most important person, later unfolded into flickering hopelessness.
“Some people have told us they were killed and bodies thrown in Lake Victoria, while others say they were buried somewhere along Entebbe Road..but when I heard Nabbanja say that they had him in custody and he was being accused of burning police stations, we were hopeful that perhaps they would charge him in courts of law; we were hopefull but then we started going in circles.”
She added: “We have spent a lot of money searching for him...some people claiming to be security agencies extorted a lot of money from us, saying they know where he is and they can help.One time they even made us organise a party after we were told that they were delivering him that day.It was all in vain.”
Kibalama is one of about a dozen persons presented variously by NUP as among dozens of their supporters kidnapped and disappeared, and even feared dead. Security organs have vehemently denied knowing his whereabouts.
Others are John Damulira, Vincent Nalumoso, Martin Lukwago, Shafik Wangolo, Yuda Sempijja, Muhamad Kanata, Moses Mbabazi, Hassan Mubiru, Dennis Zimula,and Michael Semuddu.
Since the 2021 election campaigns, NUP has categorically accused security organs—particularly CMI and SFC—of having led the operations in which dozens of their supporters were kidnapped and carted off to ungazetted locations, many of whom came out maimed.
There were also tales of rape, as a tool of torture, of both men and women in detention facilities.Security organs have denied the claims.
Misery, mystery lingers Unlike the hopeful Ms Nabukeera, Ms Sarah Damulira is grossly fed up with dealing with ambiguous loss.
“Some people have started calling us widows...but why should we be called such when we don’t know where the remains of our husbands are laying,” a melancholic Ms Damulira recounted.
Ms Mary Namuyanja, Lukwago’s wife, narrates a similar ordeal of being condemned to single motherhood.
“We have searched everywhere but in vain. They have defrauded us of money...some people claiming that they can help with his return,” Ms Namuyanja said, adding: “He left me with three children...whenever our youngest sees his pictures on TV he asks where his dad was buried. This, as we are struggling to get by.”
Her husband was kidnapped by a coterie of security personnel riding in two drones from Middle East Bugolobi market in Nakawa on November 23, 2020.
They brandished guns and concealed their faces by wearing balaclavas, according to witness accounts.
According to witness accounts, the marauding security personnel could barely identify Lukwago and asked others who worked in the market where he was.
At the time of his arrest, Lukwago, who was recovering from a hernia operation, had taken a break and was playing board game (Ludo) with his friends. Eventually the soldiers encircled him and his friends.
Ms Namuyanja and her-laws say they visited several known detention facilities, from Nalufenya in Jinja, Kitalya Maximum Security Prison, CMI headquarters in Mbuya, and several police stations and all searches for the father of three were in vain.
Lukwago was a popular mobiliser for NUP and had campaigned for party’s presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bibi Wine, and those contesting for councillor positions in Nakawa.
Witnesses say he was never part of the November 18 and 19, 2020 protests for which it is suspected he was kidnapped like hundreds of others around the country.
National Unity Platform (NUP) president Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine consoles a relative of John Bosco Kibalama, who has been missing since 2019, at the party headquarters in Kampala on October 30. There are 18 NUP supporters still missing, according to the party. PHOTOS/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
In various addresses since February 13, 2021, President Museveni ordered security agencies to produce a list of all individuals in custody as a method of accountability for those who were missing.
The President said, then, the CMI had arrested 177 persons who were granted bail or released, while another 65 were still being investigated.
Later in March 2021,Museveni detailed in a missive dated February 23,2021 that at least 51 people who disappeared were in the custody of the SFC, an elite outfit within the UPDF charged with guarding the President, top state guests and officials as well as key national installations.
During the subsequent months, the government sided through among others, the Ministry of Internal of Affairs, Parliament, and Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC),bickered with NUP representatives over the validity of the names of the various lists presented.
The UHRC,a quasi-judicial body established to protect and promote fundamental human rights and freedoms, in October last year announced the closure of the NUP missing supporters’probe arguing that it failed to ascertain whether some of the said persons existed.
NUP, consequently, filed a case at the High Court to compel the government to produce the said persons whether dead or alive.
The case was dismissed last month with the presiding judge reasoning that there is no evidence that the missing persons were arrested by the state.
During the court hearings, the Attorney General (AG), the government’s chief legal adviser, argued that the victims’ disappearances were neither reported to police as relatives allege.
The AG attached separate search requests from the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA), Interpol, Police Forensic Laboratory, and Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control, with all results showing from“record seen”,“no record found”, “not availed”, “many matches found couldn’t zero to one”.
“The court didn’t say the people never existed. The AG relied on police assertions that the people have never been in any police register. But only police and prisons keep registers, and from what we recall these people were arrested by armed people who didn’t introduce themselves as police. The victims’ families even described to court the manner in which their relatives were arrested,” NUP lawyer George Musisi told a press conference early this month.
He added: “In some cases these people, like John Damulira and Martin Lwanga, were arrested with other people who came back and recounted what they saw or happened. So if they ever existed...where are they and who should account?”
Pardon, mercy, politics
Some of the people previously presumed missing were eventually charged in court,including Olivia Lutaaya and 18 others who were tried before the General Court Martial in Makindye, Kampala, in defiance of the Constitutional court ruling that the military court has no powers to try civilians.
Ms Lutaaya and the group spent more than four years in jail and were variously denied bail.
Others included Rashid Ssegujja, Robert Rugumayo,Muhydin Kakooza, Abdul Matovu, Mesach Kiwauka, Ibrahim Wandera,Asubat Nagwere,Stehen Musakuru, Paul Muwanguzi, Sharif Matovu, Davis Mafabi, Livingstone Kigozi, Swaibu Katabi, Siraji Mudebo, Joseph Mugnaz, and Sanely Lwanga.
The securing of freedom for the group that materialised with a presidential pardon last week on Friday was a result of several back and forth, including involvement of the junior minister for Youth and Children Affairs, Mr Balaam Barugahara Ateenyi.
The episode, however, is reminiscent of when scores of youths rounded up during the September 2009 riots, which broke out after the government blocked Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi from visiting Kayunga District, when scores of youths rounded up were kept in detention until the run-up to the 2011 elections.
Ms Lutaaya and the group, who denied the charges during the last 40 months of their ordeal, were strong-armed into a plea deal after which they were sentenced on October 15 on charges of treachery and unlawful possession of explosive devices contrary to sections 129 and 3 of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and Fire Arms Act, respectively.
They were arrested during the high-octane presidential elections campaigns between 2020 and 2021,which pitted the incumbent in power for 38 years, President Museveni and NUP’s Kyagulanyi.
During campaigns in November 2020, spontaneous protests broke out in parts of the country following the arrest of Mr Kyagulanyi while campaigning in Luuka District for violating the Covid-19 prevention guidelines.
More chaos ensued by both sides—but worse, by some rogue security elements who went about shooting brazenly.
After two days it was carnage,of at least 54 people dead and dozens injured. A police probe established that 49 of the dead were not protesters as it was initially claimed.
The government promised to compensate families of the deceased but no update so far on the process, while no errant security personnel has been arrested nor prosecuted for the innocent loss of lives which bordered on criminality.
Since 2021, the government through the AG’s office has been pledged to compensate victims of the November 2020 riots, but without taking responsibility, which process went into a lull.
Ms Olivia Lutaaya boards a military van at the General Court Martial in Kampala in October. Ms Lutaaya and 18 other NUP supporters were pardoned by President Museveni on November 22, 2024
“A number of claims have been presented and we have embarked on the process of compensation,” AG Kiryowa Kiwanuka told the parliamentary Human Rights Committee in March 2022.
Establishing the whereabouts of the missing persons has specifically proved hard for family members because the command structure of who sanctioned or carried out the abduction of civilians was not well laid out.
This has led critics to draw parallels to the past regimes of Amin and Obote, the army and security outfits that operated through loose command structures wielded immense powers and by impulse determined the fate of hundreds kidnapped.
Owing to the heightened disappearance of civilians especially those real and perceived opponents of the Amin regime, during the Amin era there was a decree passed in 1974 called the Missing persons decree which made provisions for the time frame within which a person would be declared missing and therefore all efforts would cease to establish the whereabouts of that person.
That decree was repealed and currently there is no legal framework for any person who goes missing. But for the government and the families, this unresolved disappearance looms large.
Just like the previous chapters of anarchy, violence and bloodshed, events, which are captured in the preamble of Uganda’s 1995 Constitution, history keeps repeating itself.
