FIRST READ:
When the Hunter becomes the hunted: Top police chiefs worried about Anti-torture Bill
UN Convention on torture to be
enforced in Uganda
Publish Date: Jul 18, 2012
Uganda
and other five African countries have started to develop the implementation
framework to enforce the UN Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman
treatment.
Uganda ratified
the Convention in 1986 but it has never been implemented.
Researchers
from Uganda Human rights commission (UHRC), University of Cape Town, University
of Western Cape in South Africa, University of Bristol in UK and African
Policing Civilian Oversight Forum are developing the implementation frame work
for Uganda, South Africa, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Mozambique.
The
project dubbed Article 5 Initiative is funded by the European Union.
The
ambassador of the European Union to Uganda, Roberto Ridolfi in a speech
read for him during a stakeholders meeting on domestication of the UN
Convention against torture said all countries are obligated to comply with the
unconditional prohibition of all forms of torture and ill-treatment under
international law.
He
said the EU calls upon all member states to implement fully the absolute and
non-derogable prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment.
The
head of the criminal division of the high court told a meeting attended by
police, army officers and officials from the justice law and order sector that
people have been tortured in their homes, schools, police cells, prisons and in
war zones in Uganda.
Justice Lamech Mukasa addressed the group at Imperial Resort
Beach in Entebbe on Tuesday.
He
said torture has been employed to extract confessions, adding that “these
barbaric acts are likely to continue unless the UN Convention against torture,
African charter on human and peoples' rights are enforced.”
If the Anti-torture Bill is signed into law by the President, all evidence obtained under torture would be expunged from court records and security officials accused of torture would be sued individually instead of dragging government to court.
According
to the Bill, individual security officers would no longer justify torture of
suspects using "orders from above.”
If
they did, they would be held responsible for the cruel treatment. Superior
officers would also be held responsible for the actions of the junior officers
under their command.
The
Human Rights officers said the Bill will save tax payers from paying
compensation fees to torture victims since individual culprits would have to
foot the bills.
Debra
Long, a human rights researcher from Bristol
University said the
implementation framework would be ready by the end of next year.
The
UHRC boss, Medi Kaggwa said that torture by State actors and non-State actors
in Uganda
was still rampant hence the need to domesticate all international conventions
on torture and national laws aimed at preventing and eliminating the crime.
