By Polly Johnson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
KAMPALA, Uganda – A special unit of Uganda’s police force routinely engages in brutal torture of prisoners, according to a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.
Thirteen months of research and testimony from more than one hundred interviews with former detainees, their families and members of the police unit exposed a unit that carries out torture, extortion and sometimes, extrajudicial killings, which are deliberate unlawful killings by security forces.
The R.R.U., created by President Yoweri Museveni in 2002 as an ad hoc security entity, was renamed the Rapid Response Unit in 2007. The unit makes arrests for crimes ranging from petty offenses to terrorism. Last year, it assisted the United States investigate terrorist attacks in Kampala during the World Cup, in which seventy people died.
A Human Rights Watch researcher in Uganda, Maria Burnett, said, “In cases we looked at by R.R.U., suspects were beaten until they confessed, paraded before journalists and dubbed hard-core criminals and then put on trial before military officers.”
The report stated that the R.R.U. frequently beats detainees with batons, glass bottles and metal pipes. In some cases, officers inserted pins under detainees’ fingernails. “I cannot recall the number of times they pierced my nails. My nails were destroyed. They were black, swollen, and painful. The needles were inserted under the nail, on both my hands and feet. They pierced every nail,” said a former female R.R.U. detainee charged with counterfeiting.
Though suspects in Uganda have the legal right to counsel, the report noted that “in practice, defendants do not receive a state-provided lawyer until their case is at trial and often spend years in detention before they ever meet a lawyer.” However, the absence of a lawyer during a suspect’s interrogation allows rampant torture to persist.
The report offered recommendations to various groups, including the Ugandan president and government, the police force, and other concerned governments, including those of the United States and the United Kingdom.
On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Uganda said that it would continue to encourage Uganda police forces to respect human rights and the rule of law.
For more information, please see:
BBC – Ugandan police use torture, Human Rights Watch reports – 23 March 2011
Human Rights Watch – Uganda: Torture, Extortion, Killings by Police Unit – 23 March 2011
New York Times – Rights Group Accuses Ugandan Police of Torture and Killings – 23 March 2011
