These Ugandans Say They Were Sexually Assaulted by the State

Dicta Asiimwe in Uganda

Freelance journalist

Thursday, 28 November, 2024

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Stanley Kafuko, a member of Uganda’s opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) was arrested on December 30, 2020, while campaigning with party leader Bobi Wine.

Kafuko was one of 128 NUP members seized the same day, amid mass arrests targeting opposition activists in the run-up to Uganda’s hotly-contested presidential election of 2021 – in which President Yoweri Museveni held on to power.

While in detention, Kafuko told IWPR, he was sexually assaulted by men he believes were intelligence agents.

On the evening of December 31, at Masaka central police station, Kafuko was ordered out of his cell to record a statement. After about 30 minutes, the security officials told him they would make sure he was not concealing any drugs.

“One of them ordered me to take off my clothes, to which I first resisted. But I had to give in as they placed a pistol on a table and said they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me if I refused and would frame it as though I was trying to escape,” said Kafuko.

Once he was just in his underwear, Kafuko was ordered to bend over. One officer held him by the hands, while another spread his legs.  

“One of them, who wore gloves, pushed his fingers inside my butt four times and at every turn he would bring his fingers on my nose for me to smell on them,” said Kafuko.

Since the election, many former detainees have either fled Uganda or tried to keep a low profile. Kafuko, like several others, has claimed asylum in Germany. But those who suffered sexual assault in detention face another agonising dilemma: speak out about their treatment and risk a backlash, or suffer in silence.

IWPR has spoken to several former detainees who described being sexually assaulted. One young man, a supporter of the NUP, said that security agents inserted a water pipe into his anus. Two others, now living in Kenya, described similar sexual torture.

Like others, they asked to remain anonymous – both because they are worried about reprisals and because they fear the stigma that comes with admitting being a victim of sexual assault.

In Uganda, which has one of the world’s harshest anti-homosexuality laws, admitting to having been assaulted by a member of the same sex carries a particular risk. Kafuko only dared tell other NUP members the full details of his experience in July 2024, four months after he arrived in Germany.

Before then, said Benjamin Katana, an NUP lawyer and a relative of Kafuko, he would only tell family and friends that “unspeakable things” had happened.

“You just learn to live with it until it no longer hurts,” said Kafuko. “I guess it’s the case with so many victims who won’t come out to publicly give an account of what happened to them.”

Pressure to Stay Silent

Sexual assault in detention is not new to Uganda. One woman in her sixties, who asked to remain anonymous, told IWPR that in 2001 she was raped while in detention with objects including sticks and bottles, for supporting the then-leading opposition candidate Dr Kizza Besigye.

Even now, she said, she fears that fully exposing the horror would shame her.

Lisa Charity of Frauen Initiative Uganda, which works with victims of sexual violence, said that the majority of people her organisation supports rarely want to talk about their assault.

“Society’s victim-blaming is one of the elements that buttress rape culture,” she said.

Even when people report crimes, Charity said, justice is rare because Uganda’s laws and judicial system are stacked against victims.

When state agents are involved, the pressure to stay silent is even greater. A close associate of Wine told IWPR that he can no longer talk about his experience of being abused in detention because it would put a target on his back.

Uganda police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke did not deny that sexual assault could take place in detention, but claimed there was nothing systematic about it.

“Just like with any other organisation employing multitudes of people, anything – including sexual violence – can happen in the course of duty,” he told IWPR.

Rusoke said that any aggrieved party should file an official complaint with the police standards unit, adding that he was unaware any such complaints existed.

Katana said that opposition supporters in Kampala and the surrounding areas experience the worst treatment.

“In recent years the security forces’ torture methods against opposition supporters have become more diabolical,” he continued.

One reason the problem has got worse, he believes, was because NUP supporters – many of whom are young, precariously employed Ugandans angry at an older generation of leaders who they believe have outstayed their welcome – are less willing to be placated.

It also helps the government that the UHRC, Uganda’s official human rights monitoring body, appears uninterested in taking on cases, particularly where the state is accused of torturing political prisoners.

UHRC spokesperson Idah Nakiganda told IWPR that this was due to victims’ reluctance to report cases. But others argue the UHRC could be more proactive.

“I get a sense UHRC’s independence has been constrained by self censorship,” said Livingstone Sewanyana, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative.

According to Katana, one senior UHRC official told the NUP leadership that in an increasingly repressive environment, the human rights organisation needed to be careful not to upset the government.

One young woman, an NUP member who asked to remain anonymous, said that she had reported her rape in detention to the police and the UHRC. But the case never made progress with either body, she said.

Pregnant and Assaulted

Yet while justice is rare, it is sometimes possible to get the Ugandan state to acknowledge wrongdoing. Nana Annette Namata was assaulted by police officers in April 2019, at the gate of the Uganda Police headquarters in Kampala.

Namata, who was six months pregnant at the time, had arrived for a meeting with a senior officer to discuss a complaint about police brutality in an incident a few days earlier. Having experienced a hostile reception at the gate, she retreated to her car.

Officers then broke into her vehicle and pepper sprayed and tear gassed her, after which they pulled her out and then attempted to induce her labour.

“They literally fingered me in broad daylight,” she said.

Namata said that one officer kicked her on the stomach and told her the police would help her give birth, as others threw her to the ground. When she started to be sick, they force fed her water and made her swallow her own vomit.

Namata gave birth prematurely, and was so badly injured she spent several years in a wheelchair before being able to walk normally again. She sued the police, along with the government and the doctors who initially treated her, and was awarded compensation.

The court decision came just a few days after Namata addressed the European Parliament, which was investigating women’s rights and gender equality in Uganda, in December 2020. She suspects her success was a direct result of this international scrutiny.

Namata was awarded UGX 35 million (9,505 US dollars) in compensation, a relatively small sum that she points out did not even cover the cost of the time she and her baby spent in hospital. No officers involved in her assault have faced punishment.

Nonetheless, she considers the ruling a victory because it confirmed she had been tortured and, she continued, “The state acknowledging wrongdoing against protesters and opposition supporters is rare.”