A diehard supporter of Uganda’s leading opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Mr. Edgar Butare has asked the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights to get to the bottom of torture allegations at Nalufenya Police Station in Jinja district.
Mr. Butare who fled the country after different run-ins with the Police questions the failure by legislators to verify the real conditions of unlisted suspects in the now infamous detention facility in Jinja that new Police chief Ochola Martins Okoth claims to have closed.
“A lot of my fellow activists have been secretly taken to Nalufenya just three months of the new IGP when on national television to claim that he was designating Nalufenya detention facility to a police station,” Mr. Butare who is reportedly hiding in the United States told this website in an online interview.
“Fellow Ugandans want to see IGP Ochola walk his talk and bring to book its errant officers who carried out torture acts on us (suspects) at the facility,” he added.
“Okay let us not be lied to that Nalufenya which was publicly known, trust me, now the danger is torture has gone to unknown safe houses which is even more dangerous to people who oppose this regime.”
Butare who hails from the southwestern district of Kisoro says he is ready to recount the aching tales of torture, human rights violations, as well as inhumane and degrading treatment opposition youth, were subjected to whenever anti-Museveni arrests are made in Kampala.
After several months in hiding, the FDC man said on several occasions, he was arrested and detained on charges of unlawful assembly and inciting violence.
On one of the occasions, Butare was arrested when he had organised fellow youth to protest just outside Kampala’s dusty Old Taxi Park, to meet fellow youth for a rally during the flopped ‘Tubalemese campaign’ (Literally meaning let’s fail or curtail them). The group was hurled onto a waiting Uganda Police patrol van that was seen driving through the city in the direction of Jinja.
The fateful campaign had just been launched by opposition strongman Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye and was aimed at instigating civil disobedience in the citizenry following the lifting of the presidential age limit in parliament. This is not the first time the Uganda Police has arrested and harassed individual figures who are not widely known to the public.
In the interview, Butare said that his private parts were squeezed with a pair of plyers that has since rendered him useless conjugally. Butare also said at Nalufenya, some of the torture included denying suspects sleep by continuously interrogate them for more than 7 hours nonstop.
After a few days, Butare and three other activists were released without any official charges but haunted and scared, the Christian preacher and his colleagues got information that the notorious former commandant of the Police Flying Squad Unit and head of the Manpower Audit Herbert Muhangi, was irked by their release and planning to rearrest them, the group went underground before being sneaked out of the country who have since vanished.
Muhangi has been known for hunting down suspects in anti-Museveni cases.
A request for comment sent to the Inspector General of Police remained unanswered by the time this article was published.
Uncertain future
Currently, Mr. Butare is claiming political asylum in the United States until the political situation in Uganda comes to normalcy. He would like to return to Kampala and continue his evangelism work, but he’s afraid of being prosecuted for political dissent and treason.
Scores of Ugandan political dissidents had been arrested since the 2016 national elections and that
Butare says any Mufumbira or ethnic Munyarwanda from Kisoro who doesn’t support the government should start seriously considering whether they are safe from arrest, harassment or worse, and draw the appropriate conclusions.
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