Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday called on the Ugandan government to close illegal detention centers used by the security services to suppress the opposition, in a report documenting the torture practiced in these clandestine sites.
The NGO collected testimonies from 51 people, including 34 former detainees and abduction witnesses, who described the abuses they suffered at the hands of the police, the army and the intelligence services (ISO) between April 2019 and November 2021.
This period was marked in particular by fierce repression during the January 2021 elections, which saw President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, being re-elected after a vote described as a “masquerade” by the opposition.
According to HRW, many of these victims are still missing.
“Human Rights Watch calls on the Ugandan government to immediately close all so-called safe houses and unauthorized detention centers”, writes the NGO, asking to “release all those detained […] or to bring them forthwith before a court to be charged with a recognizably criminal offence”.
The victims interviewed – members of the opposition, sympathizers or simple demonstrators – recount their arrest at home, at their place of work or in the street, embarked in vans without license plates nicknamed “drones”.
They claim to have been arbitrarily detained in secret locations supervised by the ISO, including a site called “Base One”, on the outskirts of the capital Kampala, and another on the island of Lwamayuba, on Lake Victoria.
“Not here tomorrow” for speaking
These victims say they were brutalized and tortured, in particular according to a technique called “Rambo” consisting in suspending the detainees from the ceiling for a dozen hours with chains around their necks, waists and knees.
Some claim to have had fingernails pulled out, been burned with an iron, to have been subjected to electric shocks, injections of unknown substances or sexual violence, or to have seen detainees with bricks hanging from the testicles.
“What happens in safe houses is not a movie, it’s real”, launched Tuesday during a press conference organized by HRW Hassan Mutyaba, a businessman who was detained for eight months in a of these sites.
“Most of my colleagues were afraid to come” to testify, he added. “Are we going to survive? We are not going to survive. Today I am here, but I will not be here tomorrow because I have spoken. »
Impunity
“Urgent action is needed to help victims, hold abusive security officers accountable, and end this specter of impunity and injustice,” said Oryem Nyeko, Uganda Researcher at long.
In a February 2020 report, the Ugandan Parliament’s human rights committee reported cases of illegal detention and torture in unofficial centers. His requests for investigation went unheeded, according to HRW.
Recent years have been marked in Uganda by increased repression against journalists, the imprisonment of lawyers and the muzzling of opposition leaders.
At the beginning of February, the writer and opponent Kakwenza Rukirabashaija fled to Germany, explaining that he had to undergo treatment after being tortured in detention. He had been arrested at the end of December, then charged with “offensive communication” towards President Museveni and his son for a series of tweets.
The US Treasury in December sanctioned the head of the military intelligence services, Major General Abel Kandiho, for his alleged involvement and that of his services in serious human rights violations, including “beatings”, “sexual assault” and “electrocution”.
General Kandiho was appointed in February to head the national police by President Museveni.