Security forces accused of torturing suspects

Ugandan security forces frequently torture suspects despite government admonitions against the practice, the country's human rights commission said in a report released this week.

"Going by the complaints at the Commission, torture seems to be a method of work in some security organs," the Uganda Human Rights Commission, a state-constituted watchdog, said in its annual report.

"It [torture] is either presented as part of training, or a learned practice that is indispensable in the operations of some security organs," the report added. "Many of the victims of torture are poor petty offenders who end up seriously injured."

According to the 187-page report, victims often say they are beaten with metal objects on the limbs and then incarcerated in unknown places for indefinite periods of time in an attempt to allow the healing process of the torture wounds to complete, prior to being released.

The commission reported that last year, torture complaints accounted for 22 percent of the 2,050 cases of human rights abuse brought before it. It added that impunity for perpetrators of torture left the impression that the practice was sanctioned by the state.

The commission said that a government security agency known as "Violent Crime Crack Unit" (VCCU) was the main offender, adding that the unit had often detained suspects for as long as a year without charge.

"Torture was used not only to extract information or confession, but also deliberately as an expression of power to humiliate and break the spirit of those arrested," said the report.

Torture methods included beatings, suspending weighty objects on male genitals, blindfolding, threatening death and pouring water on nude bodies.

"At Makindye (a barracks in a Kampala suburb), the commission saw many suspects with gruesome torture marks," the report said. "One suspect had a completely deformed leg, his knee joint having been knocked out of shape."

"Others had massive scars on their backs caused by beatings or drips from hot molten plastic jerricans," it added. "The commission was told by the detainees that these tortures never took place at Makindye but at facilities operated by the VCCU."

The commission demanded that the government "show strong commitment and practice to deal with perpetrators of torture within the security organs" and that authorities clarify VCCU's mandate and make its operations both transparent, and subject to the laws governing the procedures of the police.

The commission said that the government was legally bound by national and international conventions to take measures to prevent torture, investigate reported cases and punish offenders.

The watchdog also urged the government to remove legal and administrative restrictions on political freedoms.

"With the country in transition to multiparty system of politics, it is important that freedom of assembly and association are not curtailed by unnecessary restrictions," the commission said. "People might not always need the law or the police to tell them what to do and it is not always true that when people are left alone to exercise the freedom of association and assembly, they will always cause anarchy."

The commission said that it had witnessed cases of young boys recruited into a militia known as Amuka, which helps government troops fight Lord's Resistance Army rebels in the northern Lira district.

"These boys certainly knew they should not be in the militia and tried to falsify their ages when questioned," the report said. "The UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) may not have been directly responsible for recruiting children into the Amuka militia, but they owe a duty to ensure that they are detected and removed."