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Yet another one of a series of victims of trigger happy security personnel happened over the Christmas festivities. The government owned vernacular daily – Bukedde, of December 28th, carried a story of how Ms. Josephine Najjuma was murdered in cold blood by a trigger happy guard working for a private security firm called Rhino.
It was reported that this followed a misunderstanding between beer sellers and their customers over a Shs 500 refund for the empty bottle at the Eagles Production show in Kampala.
Ugandans witness such killings very often and the most unfortunate thing is that this has no exception to any “security” organisation. Such cold blood killings have been committed by members of the UPDF within war zones, protected camps for the displaced persons, in bars where soldiers go to drink with their guns
even within areas that are not in war situations like Kampala.
Police personnel are also wanton at such silly shootings during peaceful demonstrations by unarmed civilians, at opposition political gatherings etc. The so called Local Defence Unit (LDU) personnel have killed many in similar circumstances just as private firm security personnel, like the case of Ms. Najjuma, have done. And some senior citizens of our land have pulled out their guns at the slightest provocation and told every one that they can use it. All these killings have a common denominator.
Whereas in some of such cases there is premeditated intention to kill the victims over a number of reasons, there are instances where you wonder why security operatives have to use the last option first while handling such conflicts! We would all expect that security personnel know very well that live bullets kill and
therefore they aim their weapons at unarmed civilians well knowing that the result of their actions will be death, but they go ahead and do it anyway.
We may find answers to such behaviour from a number of factors but, may be, some of them may include lack of respect to human life by our political leadership in general.
This has resulted in our security personnel to have no respect for life either since they see, hear and witness their leaders taking away life at will and in most cases using those very security personnel to effect the killings.
Readers may agree with me that we have heard our political leaders always talking about “fighting” , “killing”, their political opponents but not defeat them by the power of reason and intellectual debate of ideas; such leaders have always equipped their supporters not with the power of reason but instruments of coercion and
destruction.
Haven’t we heard one of our political leaders threaten to kill one of our former leaders should he dare touch down at Entebbe Airport? Do we recall an army officer who was allegedly promoted just after driving through an opposition procession and killing some persons during the 2001 presidential election? Just reflect on alleged deliberate use of guns and other torture instruments allegedly by Kalangala Action Plan during the 2001 elections, was reason at play here or the instruments of coercion and destruction of life?
The most significant factor is the way most of our security personnel are trained and used. My humble assessment is that there is a tendency of emphasizing use of maximum physical force with very little effort spent in equipping these personnel with the power of reason and effective assessment of conflict situations so as to disarm or disable
conflicting persons without necessarily pulling out the gun.
Most of our security personnel hardly think through such situations and so the first thing they go for (may be as per their training) when faced with such a conflict, like Mukono was, is the gun, not reason. This may significantly explain why, for instance, a police personnel would aim his AK47 gun loaded with live bullets at a group of peaceful demonstrators who are only equipped with placards and pens. This is exactly what happened when Mr. Mukono was called to resolve the differences between the arguing ladies over Shs500. He went for his gun first, not the power of reason. I may not blame Mukono, may be that is how he was trained to respond.
Now, considering that the majority of personnel employed by private security firms are former army men and police personnel, then we can all know where the problem
emanates from; more so when we hardly see any difference between how the private security personnel, the police personnel, and the army men handle such situations.
Shouldn’t the police and army training institutions review their curriculum so that whereas their trainees must master the handling and usage of fire arms, the power of reason and quick assessment of any conflicting situation is far more important in managing conflicts other than always thinking of using the gun in the first place? That way we won’t have such cases of unnecessary killings of innocent Ugandans like the late Josephine Najjuma (RIP).
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