Monday, January 27, 2003
Are the Amin Days Back?
Ugandans celebrated President Yoweri Museveni's 17 years in power amid increased media reports of people who have gone missing after being arrested at night by plainclothes security operatives.
What is alarming is that such people are not seen or heard of until their relatives complain and seek judicial redress before they are produced in court.
The trend is worrying and the government should move quickly to allay the growing fears before the situation gets out of hand.
Of equal concern is the fact that a multiplicity of security arms seem to be empowered to make arrests. These include the police, Internal Security Organisation operatives, officers from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence and Colonel Elly Kayanja's Operation Wembley.
Invariably, these arrests are secretly executed and suspects held incommunicado for weeks and in some cases for months. The police � the statutory law-enforcing agency � plays only a secondary role.
The law that allows these agencies to hold a person for up to one year without being charged in court infringes on the rights of the detainees. What if no evidence of a crime is ever found, will such a person be compensated?
It is sometimes difficult to determine which security agency has made the arrest. This is worrying because criminals can take advantage of the confusion to make people open their gates for them at night.
Police chief Katumba Wamala last week produced a detainee, Pascal Gakyaro, in court after his family obtained a court order. The family did not even know which security agency had arrested him.
The 50-year-old Civil Aviation Authority official had been held, handcuffed and blindfolded, in two different locations.
Gakyaro is lucky that he has relatives who are enlightened and can afford to go to court. So, what happens to those who cannot seek legal redress and do not know big political names?
It is time the government halted this practice as it is bringing back memories of past regimes that were synonymous with arbitrary arrests and torture. The Idi Amin days, which led to many deaths and exiles, come uncomfortably to mind.
Proper procedures should be followed in such detentions and the police should be allowed to play their role.
The Movement government should be careful not to lose the people's trust, overwhelmingly expressed during the 2001 presidential election.
A worrying trend is that most of the people arrested over the past two months are linked to the Reform Agenda, a political pressure group headed by exiled former presidential candidate Colonel Kiiza Besigye, Museveni's main challenger in that election.
If the government thinks that these people threaten national security, then it should simply allow the law to take its course.
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