Museveni torture rampage continues amidst a bogus Uganda Human Rights Commission : Detainees forced to eat 3kg of posho, 1kg of beans in 20 minutes: NUP man claims being tortured in military cell

 

 

 Mr Cyrus Sambwa Kasato shows a scar from a wound he allegedly sustained while in detention. PHOTO | JOSEPH KIGGUNDU

 

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NUP man claims being tortured in military cell

https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/nup-man-claims-being-tortured-in-military-cell-3309514 

Tuesday March 02 2021

 

On February 8, at around half-past-midday, we were in a meeting at Womeya School in Kyebando.

The parish chief had convened [the meeting for] all parish chairpersons to listen to guidance from [officials of a] certain non-governmental organisation (NGO) on how to handle marriage and family-related issues.

While we were still in the meeting, a double-cabin pick-up entered the school compound and one occupant dressed in civilian clothes came out and entered the room. The man said: ‘Kasato, first come out; I need to talk to you’.

I went with him and as we were standing outside, I saw two other people dressed in Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) uniforms with guns.  I asked [the man who had called me out] what he wanted.

He slapped me and with the help of the other officers, I was arrested and dragged into their vehicle. When I entered their vehicle, they hand-cuffed and blindfolded me with a black piece of cloth.

Then they started beating me while asking me questions [about allegations of collecting evidence for Mr Kyagulanyi during the January 14 elections].

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I told them that it was true that I collected the evidence, but I had already submitted it to [Bobi Wine’s] National Unity Platform (NUP) party headquarters in Kamwokya [a Kampala suburb]. The evidence was for election results and we wanted to use it to challenge Museveni’s victory in the 2021 polls.

They asked me about NUP’s next plan. I told them that I am the chairman of the constituency and at my level the NUP National Executive Committee (NEC) has never given us the next plan after general elections and I referred them to NEC.

While we were moving, they started beating me while handcuffed and blindfolded. They stopped somewhere and they shifted me from the double-cabin pick-up to another vehicle [I suspected to be a drone] and they told me to lie down. They (soldiers) started beating me with heavy sticks while asking me the same questions they had asked me before.

They first detained me at Special Investigations Directorate or SID (in Kireka, Wakiso District) where I spent only three hours. 

While I was in their custody, one officer came and asked me why I don’t support Museveni. I replied: Why don’t you also support Bobi Wine? From there they started beating me seriously and one officer came and beat me on one side of my cheek and [my ear on the side] stopped hearing completely.

Then another officer came into the cells and asked, in Kiswahili, the cell guard: ‘Who is this person’? They told him that he was arrested from Kyebando. He told them that ‘this is not our person’ and he ordered them to take me where I belong.

Again, they put me in a vehicle and drove me to Mbuya while handcuffed and blindfolded.

In Mbuya, I realised I was at the headquarters of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI). I was taken before an army officer to get my particulars and later took me to the cells where I found other suspects.

While in the cells, a group of soldiers came and asked whether there was a new person in the cell and suspects responded ‘yes we have and he is here’. The soldiers started beating me. 

In the night, two other people told them that I had refused to give them information that they wanted. 

On the same night, their boss came and ordered them to suspend me in the air. They tied me up so that my feet could not touch the ground.

After a while, another soldier came and asked the cell guard why I was tied up like that? They told him that those were the orders given to them. The officer then ordered them to remove me from where I was tied.  Then he ordered them to take me to the Go-down where suspects were sleeping.

When I reached the Go-down, I found several young boys and, fortunately some of them were boys from Wakiso who knew me. 

One of them was a boy who contested for the LC2 seat in Kyengera on the NUP ticket. He had stayed there for a long time and was actually on the committee of those that run the cell. He gave me a mat and a bedsheet then I slept because I was almost dying.

In the morning, the officer who [the previous evening] instructed that they remove me from the hanging point came back and called me. He told me that now ‘I am going to take you back to where I found you because I was helping you and I do not want the bosses to know about it’.

He handcuffed me, blindfolded me and put me back on my hanging point.

In the morning, at around 7.30am, they called me to make a statement and they asked me the same questions. After recording the statement, they told me to sign it which I did. He then said he is taking it to his bosses.

After one hour, he came back and said ‘we are taking you to court because you have refused to tell us what we wanted’.

At around 11.30am, I with eight others were taken to Unit Disciplinary Court at Mbuya where I was told that on November 18, 2020, while in areas of Wakiso, I was seen putting on military-related clothes yet UPDF has monopoly over it. I denied the offence.

The court remanded me to Makindye Military Barracks prison from February 9 – 17, 2021.

At Makindye barracks, I was taken to the military hospital because I was not in a good shape before entering the cell.

I spent two days in the hospital while on serious medication. 

On February 17, the officers who are in-charge of taking suspects to court told us that they were taking us to Bombo Military Court. 

They handcuffed, blindfolded us but as we were moving, one of us spotted Lubugi wetland and that was when we knew that we were going to Nansana and were probably being taken to UPDF 1st Division headquarters court in Kakiri, Wakiso District.

When we reached Kakiri, I asked the officer to allow me make telephone calls to my people so that they could come and stand as surety for me. 

I called the Wakiso District chairman (Matia Lwanga Bwanika) and told him to mobilise people and to come UPDF 1st Division court in Kakiri.

When we entered court, they read me the same charges they had read to me at the Unit Disciplinary Court in Mbuya.

My lawyers [sent by NUP] asked the court to grant me court bail on court conditions and I was bailed out and even up to now I am still reporting on court bail.”

Disappearing Ugandans

Over the past few months, hordes of Ugandans, especially the youth, have been rounded up by unidentified people who relatives of the victims suspect to be security operatives.

Many of those who have been picked up have not been in contact with their loved ones since. It has taken months for some, and the crackdown seems to continue.

The different accounts this publication has gathered about many of those arrests, in fact almost all show that they are supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party and their loved ones suspect that the arrests are politically motivated.

NUP party and its leader, Mr Kyagulanyi, have on many occasions cried out about what they say is the continued harassment and illegal detention of their supporters and members.

 

 

Kidnap: Detainees forced to eat 3kg of posho, 1kg of beans in 20 minutes

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/68479-kidnapped-nup-supporters-fed-on-rotting-food 

March 1, 2021

 

Written by URN

 

 

Gruesome stories continue coming out of Uganda's torture chambers as survivors describe the physical and mental mistreatment they were subjected to by members of the armed forces following their arrests.

More than 1,000 people were subsequently arrested and more than 54 shot dead following violent countrywide protests on November 18 and 19, 2020 triggered by the arrest of then-presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi in Luuka district in eastern Uganda. Last month President Yoweri Museveni said the commandos unit had arrested over 200 people and killed some who he called "terrorists" who wanted to block the January 14 presidential elections. 

Kareem Muganga, a taxi conductor was arrested on December 21, from Kabembe stage on Kayunga road in Mukono North. Muganga says he was arrested as he persuaded passengers to board his taxi. Immediately, he says, he was handcuffed, blindfolded and thrown into a waiting car that sped off.

 

Muganga doesn’t know where he was being imprisoned until his release last week. With the beatings having become a daily routine, the most disquieting story from his stay in detention was being forced to eat three kilograms of posho and a kilogram of beans in 20 minutes.

It’s not only him who faced this kind of torture, Muganga claims. Many other people, about 1,000 detainees who were in the same detention facility as he was, would be asked to eat much more food than their stomachs could accommodate. Those who did not finish this food, he says, would be beaten and beatings "measured in kilograms", where 1kg was 100 strokes. 

In the process of torture, Muganga says he lost a tooth and his left eye and the ear were also injured. He has since lost his hearing and one has to shout when talking to him. 

Muganga also narrates that a colleague, Eric Sempijja who is asthmatic, one day tried to pull off the cloth they use to blindfold him because he was having difficulties in breathing but when the soldiers came, they started beating him mercilessly claiming he wanted to escape. Sempijja, he says had never been seen again after his "transfer". 

BOBI WINE SONGS

According to Muganga, the detainees were forced to sing Bobi Wine’s songs in another 'creative' form of torture. One night, he says detainees were asked to sing Bobi Wine’s Tuliyambala Engule (We shall wear the crown) song with the soldiers emphasizing the last verse of “tulivimba mu Uganda empya” loosely translated as “we will have swag in the new Uganda.”

He says soldiers said they were going to show them the 'new Uganda.' For an entire night, according to Muganga, detainees were made to sing, sit, stand, squat repetitively. 

RELEASE 

Muganga says one night at around 8:30 pm last month on February 12, soldiers came and asked him his name quietly, and before Muganga even finished saying his name, the men carried him up to the toilet, unfolded his eyes, photographed him gave him a white shirt and together with some colleagues were thrown into a car 30 minutes and then driven around until about midnight.

He was later dumped in a sugarcane plantation in a place he does not know. Intriguingly, after being dumped, he was given back his phone, fully charged yet when he was arrested, it hardly had any battery charge left.

He says at the time, he was arrested his phone had no airtime but upon release, he found that his captors had loaded airtime for him on his phone which he used to call relatives.   

After release, Muganga, says that he has failed to work as a conductor again because he can hardly hear passengers calling him to collect the money and he also cannot see those standing on the roadside waiting for taxis.

 

 

 Joseph Nkoyoyo Kyakuwa has just returned home from abduction. Courtesy photo

Two NUP supporters rotting away in their homes

https://www.independent.co.ug/two-nup-supporters-rotting-away-in-their-homes/ 

The Independent February 9, 2021

 

 

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Two National Unity Platform-NUP supporters who were allegedly kidnapped from Katoogo village in Nama sub county in Mukono North constituency are rotting away at their homes after undergoing a series of torture. Twenty-three-year-old Joseph Nkoyoyo Kyakuwa and 53-year-old Fred Kamya Yuya sustained serious injuries but they were reportedly warned by their tormentors to stay away from public health facilities if they want to enjoy peace for the rest of their lives.

The duo went missing on December 22, 2020, together with thirteen others during the fierce Mukono North parliamentary campaigns. The campaigns pit the incumbent Member of Parliament and National Resistance Movement-NRM party candidate, Ronald Kibuule and National Unity Platform-NUP candidate and MP elect, Abdullah Kiwanuka Mulimamayuni.

Yuya was later dropped at Kavule, Nansana municipality in Wakiso on December 24, 2020, under terrible condition. He has since been hiding for fear of his life. Unfortunately, his feet have started rotting up to the knee joints. Kyakuwa who was also dropped at Kavule, Nansana municipality on February 6, is also complaining of pain in his right leg, severe pain in the chest and poor visibility.

Much as the duo is still in pain and traumatized because of the torture, they have pleaded with their relatives to find simple remedies to treat them at home instead of taking them to hospital for fear of fresh abduction. Kyakuwa who spoke to URN while trembling said that he was picked from home at around 10 pm together with his friends, Sula Kiwanuka and Juma Mukasa who are still missing.

The two had paid him a visit at Katoogo trading center. They were all handcuffed and moved into a white van before their faces were blindfolded with black masks. “Ever since we were abducted, masks have been covered on our faces and tied in the neck, they only spared space for the mouth to enable us to eat food once in a while. We were subjected to severe beatings almost every hour. It is hard to describe how the torture chambers looked like but we were stepping on tiles full of itchy water, they could at times pour on our entire bodies,” Kyakuwa recalls.

 

He says the torture chamber seemed to be big and full of people who were yelling out of pain and were not allowed to talk to each other.

Kyakuwa notes that prior to their release, they were taken to another facility for treatment. “We were given tablets and injections that helped regenerate some energy in our bodies. At that center, they could do a routine roll calling of members,” he said.

Kyakuwa recalls hearing the abductors calling names of other victims of torture such as Patrick Bagambe, Fred Jjingo, Rashid Kawunda, Sulaiman Kiwanuka and Junior Ainebyona. He believes that some of the torture victims came from Kyotera, Mpigi, Kampala, Mubende and Mityana districts.

Kyakuwa’s father, Joseph Ssekimwanyi is scared about the life of his son which is deteriorating each passing day. According to Kyakuwa, his son can no longer move and experiences nightmares that force him to wake up shouting out loudly pleading for forgiveness whenever he tries to sleep.

Yuya, a father of 20 children and one pregnant wife cannot move because his legs are rotting away following two days torture. According to Yuya, he is currently unable to work and feed his family because of severe torture.

Byekwaso Venensio, the Katoogo LC 1 chairperson says the two torture victims are part of the four people who went missing in his area. He notes that he reported the matter at Mukono police station and has tried searching for the other missing people in vain. He appeals to whoever is concerned to at least release the residents in whichever condition they are.

Mukono Division Police Commander, Abubakar Musiho acknowledges receiving reports from Nama sub-county police station about the re-appearance of the residents claimed to have been abducted. He says they have embarked on investigations to establish what could have happened.

*****

URN

 

Kidnapped NUP supporters fed on rotting food

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/68479-kidnapped-nup-supporters-fed-on-rotting-food 

February 16, 2021

 

Written by URN

 

 

On top of the excruciating beatings, recently released opposition National Unity Platform supporters have said that they were fed on rotting food during detention. 

The political contest ahead of the January 2021 general election was preceded by reports of covert security operations in which scores of people from different parts of the country went missing after they were reportedly abducted by armed groups driving in numberless vehicles.  

President Yoweri Museveni last week said the arrests were carried out by military commandos who were going after elements he called terrorists planning anarchy in the country. A number of them who have since returned home, describing their detention as a nightmare crafted in both physical and emotional torture. 

 

Steven Mwanje, a resident of Nabuti cell in Mukono Municipality says he was detained for two weeks, before being dumped in the shrubs of Kyesiiga sub-county in Masaka district on Saturday. Mwanje noted that he was arrested alongside two colleagues, by armed men who said they were looking for direction to the home of one of the local leaders in Mukono municipality.

He says their captors bundled them in a waiting van, inside which they were allegedly injected with unknown fluids before they were dropped inside a filthy detention facility in an unknown place where they met several other detainees. 

"They first came to us asking for directions of the councillor. We told them we did not know where the councillor’s home as much as his campaign posters. Then they left but came back shortly after with the drone and told us even if we don’t know the home of the councillor, we should go with them to police and make a statement. We innocently obliged and entered a black van. When we started making noise they injected us with a drowsing substance and lost all consciousness," Mwanje said. 

Besides the physical beatings that left him with visible gruesome scars on his body, Mwanje adds that one of his worst experiences was being forced to eat rotting food. He alleges that insides the different detentions facilities he has been to before he was dumped, he interfaced with several other people who he says were also arrested and tortured in a similar manner. 

"When we regained consciousness, we found ourselves in a room surrounded by several other youths. They asked us why we’d been arrested. They told us we too had been kidnapped. Every two hours they would inject us with substances and we were forced to eat rotting food. I pray they release the rest of the other youths still in detention. It is a nasty experience in there. I don’t know if I will be arrested again or not," Mwanje added. 

Shafik Kalungi, 19, another victim of the alleged abduction narrates that they were blindfolded at night, driven for longer hours to unknown destinations before they were eventually dumped in thickets; a place they later learnt was in Masaka district.

"They hit me with a gun butt on the shoulder and told me not to resist the kidnap else it would get worse. They forcefully injected me on the hand with some substance I don't know which made me lose consciousness...They would bring us rotten food - mouldy posho and sweet potatoes - not fit for human consumption. But they forced us to eat it," said Kalungi.  

Innocent Kateregga, one of the local coordinators of the NUP in greater Masaka region, says that the victims are part of the long list of opposition activists that went missing after they were abducted by security operatives. He indicates that despite the reappearance of some of their colleagues, many opposition activists are still fearing for their lives to the extent of some fleeing their homes. 

Meanwhile, Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba, the Masaka Municipality MP and NUP deputy president in charge of Central region say they are working on modalities of transporting the victims back to their homes and well as providing them with psychosocial support. 

Muhammad Nsubuga, the greater Masaka regional police spokesperson noted that they are yet to register any related incidents, calling upon the victims to reach out to police and open up a file with police, such that investigations are conducted.

 

Bobi Wine mechanic narrates torture ordeal inside army barracks 

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/68756-bobi-wine-mechanic-narrates-torture-ordeal-in-army-barracks

March 8, 2021

 

Written by URN

 

 

Bony Obicho, 25, a mechanic who was repairing National Unity Platform presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi's campaign vehicles is nursing damaged intestines resulting from torture meted out by UPDF soldiers. 

Obicho was among the more than 100 Kyagulanyi campaigners arrested on December 30 last year in Kalangala district. The father of two children recounts an agonizing tale of how he was arrested and tortured for repairing cars on Kyagulanyi's campaign trail.

Obicho says it appears the torturous soldiers had observed him fixing the cars that had been damaged on the campaign trail in Jinja, Mbale and Masaka. When they arrested them in Kalangala, he says he was singled out and thrown into a waiting double cabin car, handcuffed and beaten by men dressed in black while driving him to Kalangala police station. The vehicle arrived at the police station at around 6:00 pm.

 

He was later at about midnight transferred to Kasajagirwa army barracks, Masaka where he was first taken to the sickbay for treatment. He says he was given pain killers but almost immediately, the beatings resumed. 

This time around, Obicho says while he was being beaten by soldiers, at a certain point, six soldiers who were beating him tied a white nylon rope around his neck and started pulling it from either side, asking him to reveal Bobi Wine's Plan B. They were also asking why he works on every car shot at or damaged by security during the campaigns.

"They kept asking where I had been trained," Obicho says, adding that the soldiers were suspecting that Bobi Wine might have taken him to countries like Japan, Israel or Germany for car mechanics’ training.

Obicho says he has been repairing cars for over seven years, working with his father who has a garage along Binaisa road, just adjacent to Mulago hospital. His clients included Bobi Wine's brother Mike Wine and music producer Dan Magic among other Bobi Wine’s close associates. That is how he got connected to the NUP party. Obicho says he observed that the campaign team lacked a mechanic, which he offered free of charge. And his services were willingly accepted.

“I joined Bob Wine’s campaign trail with a mindset of helping our country change from the ruling government,” he said.

On December 31, 2020, Obicho says soldiers brought photographs of him working on the damaged cars. And when he confirmed himself in the photographs, he was immediately undressed and asked to bend and face the wall and beaten once again.

On asking why he was beaten, the soldiers reportedly told him that “Kyagulanyi cannot take over power, you are going to die.”

On January 1, 2021, he says he was made to sleep naked on a cold cemented floor the entire night. He was given back his clothes in the morning and taken to another room where he found several colleagues arrested from Kalangala.

The team appeared in Masaka Magistrate's court where they were charged, remanded over assault of police officers and negligent acts likely to spread COVID-19. But Obicho wonders why they were facing COVID-19 related charges yet in detention centres, about 200 people would be crowded in a single room, sleeping body to body.

When they were remanded to Kitalya minimax security prison, Obicho says his health condition worsened and the soldiers called for doctors in Luzira who brought a mobile scan and found that a large portion of Obicho’s intestines were damaged. He showed us scan images of his damaged intestines.

According to Obicho, the sickbay within Kitalya didn’t have drugs and he had to endure the painful days that followed. He was among the 13 NUP supporters granted bail on February 8. After release, he was taken to Mulago and later transferred Lubaga hospital.

“When I reached Mulago, doctors refused me to eat any food with starch but only fruits like apples and drinks like Lucozade [energy drink] on a daily basis,” he said.

Obicho says his medical bills are being footed by the NUP secretariat.

“I can hardly sit or stand. I can’t even work because doctors told me to wait until I recover so as to resume,” he said.

Rony Samanya, a brother to Obicho, says it is very disturbing and traumatizing to see a young hardworking man who was looking after his wife, kids and parents now become jobless and helpless suffering because of torture by the national army.

“We didn’t know that he had been arrested until his wife told us and now we have to stand in the gap which is costly as well,” he said.