Kampala, Uganda – He was around 9 a.m. when Mwesigwa Masagazi heard what he thought was shots. He was at work one day of January this year, building a water drain in a village near his home. A few minutes later, a friend called him.
“Ivan is dead,” said the appellant. Masagazi thought it was a farce. He had seen Ivan Sentongo, his son, two hours earlier at home. How could he be dead?
Masagazi immediately left work and rushed to the place where his son had been killed, just 150 meters (less than 500 feet) from the place where Masagazi worked. There, lying on the ground, in pools of blood, was Sentongo, 23, lifeless. His body was surrounded by more than a dozen people, including twenty army soldiers, the defense forces of Ugandan peoples.
Masagazi asked an army officer why his son was killed. The officer did not respond. It was only a few days later, in a police report that Masagazi found that he learned that his son had been shot dead when he tried supposedly to steal someone. The police report did not specify the time that Sentongo was killed.
“Something did not add. My son was killed in broad daylight in the morning after he had just bought a Kindazi (a snack),” said Masagazi, almost in a whisper.
Masagazi says that the child whose Sentongo bought the snack told him that his son had raised his hands when he was approached by three soldiers of the update who pointed to a weapon on him and then pulled him.
Masagazi believes that his son was the target of an extrajudicial murder, which, according to many Uganda, is a constant concern.
“If my son was indeed a thief as they claim, they should have arrested him and take him to the police. But killing him in broad daylight, without arms, is horrible, “he says.
A regular event
Extrajudicial killings are executions of people by state authorities without regular procedure, or any search for facts that could indicate guilt. They have not shown any signs of slowdown in Uganda, according to non -governmental organizations and others that follow them. Although there are limited data on the frequency of extrajudicial murders in Uganda, human rights observers say they occur regularly, in violation of the law and the constitution of Uganda.
Henry Byansi, human rights lawyer in Chapter four, a local non -profit organization, and others believe that there have been hundreds of extrajudicial murders in Uganda, generally by members of the army but sometimes by the police. There are apparently endless delays in the criminal justice system, leaving people who have carried out these inexplicable murders for their actions.
The police, on the other hand, denies that there is a problem.
“In Uganda, we have no extrajudicial murders. He adds that there are moments when police in the exercise of employment involuntarily kill someone with a wandering bullet.
Colonel Chris Magezi, an acting spokesman for the army, says that he is not aware of extrajudicial killings and that civilians killed are those who are engaged in violent crimes.
Rare data, current killings
Although the defenders say that extrajudicial killings are underway, recent data is rare. During the two -year period between 2016 and 2018, 133 of these killings were conducted by the army and the police, according to a 2019 study by the Human Rights and Peace Center at the Makerere University School of Law. (These data do not include the more than 150 people, including children, killed in a 2016 attack by the Ugandan government on the Palais de Rwenzurur and the government offices of the traditional kingdom of Rwenzururu.)
Zahara Nampewo, Dean MP for the School of Law from the University of Makerere and former executive director of his Human Rights and Peace Center, believes that there are many more extrajudicial murders than researchers cannot document. She says there are many cases of people who mysteriously disappear so that their bodies were later found.
And there are also well -known recent cases.
A week before the murder of Sentongo, police pulled and killed four qualified flight suspects which, according to them, intended to steal a bank at the Acacia shopping center in Kampala.
Kahinda Otafire, Ugandan Minister of Internal Affairs, said to the legislators later that “in no case should a Ugandan be executed or killed when he was handcuffed or … not armed”. During the same session, Abas Byakagaba, the police general of the police, assured legislators that there would be an in -depth investigation into deaths.
Hassan, Katongole Fahad’s brother, one of the four people killed by the shopping center, is not convinced that justice is done. He asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of harassment.
“These are words that we have heard before the government, but the trend seems to have increased in recent years,” he said, adding that he had heard accounts of eye witness who say that some of the alleged thieves have been killed with their arms raised in surrender or when they were fleeing. Others, he said, were killed lying with their faces on the ground.
Hassan says that his brother’s head had a ball hole in the back, leading him to believe that he was shot down from behind.
Onyango, the police spokesman, said that what happened that day at the shopping center was not extrajudicial murders, but part of a police force to arrest the “guilt criminals” with a history of aggravated flying who had been followed by police after leaving his prison on bail.
Onyango also says that that or two of the suspicious thieves in the shopping center may have been innocent. The investigation continues, he said.
Growing militarization
Nampewo, the dean of the law faculty, said that the growing militarization of the country – with the soldiers involved in everything, from land transactions to fisheries – threatened the rule of law and made the public trust the security forces less.
“For more than 40 years, we have been talking about a professional army which should be able to disarm. … But what we see is the militarization of many sectors and the use of the extreme force used against civilians by the armed forces, including the suspects of theft,” she said.
Violence in the hands of the Ugandan army is not new. The 2016 conflict at the Palais de Rwenzururu is an excellent example of the problem, according to human rights experts.
Government forces stormed the kingdom’s palace and killed 153 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. The report describes what is called the Kasese massacre. Amnesty International condemned the killings shortly after their arrival. Amnesty’s researcher in East Africa Abdullahi Halakhe described the death of “extrajudicial executions” and “illegal murders”.
“During the fight, what strength were women and children killed, women who were undressed, did they against the army?” Said Nampewo.
Magezi, an acting spokesman for the army, said that people killed in the 2016 palace massacre were part of an anti-government militia. He also questions the accuracy of the 2019 report of the Center for Rights and Peace of the University of Makerere on extrajudicial murders.
“Did they take into account more than 20 police officers who were killed in Rwenzururu and three soldiers of the update?” he asks.
A new rule of law
The government and its law officers have not undertaken to ensure that extrajudicial murders end, explains Byansi, the human rights lawyer. Instead, he says, they replace their own actions with a court decision.
“They are the ones who sanction these operations so that they are aware and fully understand who poses the weapon and what operation,” explains Byansi. “The excuse of them always making surveys is only a signal according to which they are not willing to have these people continue because they are on a mission who benefits them.”
Some legislators agree. People are concerned about crime, but “police investigation agencies … sometimes do not seem to do a good job,” said Yusuf Nsibambi, member of the Parliament.
Masagazi, on the other hand, says that only justice and transparency about the death of his son can give him hope to end extrajudicial murders of civilians.
People must be held responsible, he said. The army holds arms to fire, he says, and that “ruins this country”.