By Ivan Okuda

In December 2023, the United States of America (USA) Department of Treasury slapped sanctions on alleged perpetrators of human rights abuse around the world.

Appearing on that list is not a badge of honour. It is, however, also not a reserve for men and women whose existence on earth is inconsequential.

For Uganda’s Commissioner General of Prisons (CGP), Dr. Johnson Byabashaija, getting plastered on USA’s billboard of infamy was quite a blot on a career built over 40 years.

The chief jailer stands accused of the following: presiding over torture and other serious human rights abuse against prisoners in UPS facilities, beating of prisoners by staff and fellow inmates, holding members of vulnerable groups like LGBTQI+ and government critics without access to legal counsel and conducting forced anal examinations.

Ultimately, with all the technological advancement in the world, human intelligence remains the most reliable method of intelligence gathering and yet it is susceptible to manipulation, exaggeration and fabrications.

It is unhelpful to delve into the motivations and politics behind these sanctions on the Prisons Chief.

As someone with an investigative journalism background, my fly on the wall points to the possibility that this could be the handiwork of some people within the Uganda security complex, playing palace politics and no intelligence machinery world over is immunized from such manipulation. In this case, it is noticeable that the USA got a few things wrong.

The human rights situation in Uganda’s Prisons Service

Under the Prisons Standing Orders (PSOs), UPS has an Orderly Room Procedure (ORP) in PSOs in 3 parts1,2,3. PSO1 deals with staff management, PSO 2 with prisoners and PSO 3 with prisons books, uniforms, etc.

Each of Uganda’s 269 prison facilities has this ORP to guide how staff who err, are disciplined in a process led by Justices of Peace who are graduate commissioned officers sworn in by the Chief Justice. The trial of errant officers under this ORP is instant. The outcome of the trial is transmitted to the Prisons Council constituted and chaired by the CGP, his deputy, UPS Directors, Commissioners and representatives of junior officers.

It sits every quarter. This mechanism was revived in 2006. It confirms or cancels the unit’s punishment issued against an errant prisons officer. If a punishment is confirmed, the same is captured in the monthly Service Orders which are published and can be accessed by all UPS staff across Uganda.

To improve the human rights situation in Uganda’s prisons, in 2005, human rights became a part of the curriculum in the prisons training school. Prospective prisons staff are taught international best practices spelled out in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Nelson Mandela Rules and the Bangkok Rules. In fact, Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law has a partnership with UPS that entails training all mid-level managers of UPS in human rights and humanitarian law.

In 1996, Uganda Prisons Service introduced an open-door policy which may pass for the biggest prison reform in the context of human rights, under the leadership of Mr. Joseph Etima, a man regarded as the father of the modern prison service in Uganda.

In 1996, CGP Etima hosted heads of prisons services in Africa and they came up with the Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions which adopted this open-door policy. To that end, human rights organisations can access and inspect prison facilities. The USA Secretary of State would have done with some context and facts. UPS has its fair share of challenges, common in every developing country but it is not all gloom.

For instance, UPS has a partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to build capacity in different areas, including intelligence and combating violent extremism. Surely, these credible institutions would not have partnerships with an institution that fits the frame of the USA sanctions advisory.

Human rights committees

Now, all Uganda’s 269 prisons have human rights committees comprising of five staff and five inmates as members, all selected by the Officer in Charge who, by the rule book, is not a member.

Every quarter they submit a report to the headquarters. In the same breath, UPS has also revived the aspect of Visiting Justices who visit prisons and report on conditions there. These are civilians selected from the community in every district. Their work was interrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is, therefore, difficult today, to violate the most basic human rights of inmates and conceal the same from all these mechanisms. Somehow the system will catch you. These safeguards are important to prevent impunity.

This does not mean that torture will not happen because humans will always break rules but the point is that the institution has developed mechanisms sufficient to weed out the bad apples so that impunity is not the order of the day as the case was in the 1970s.

In any case, the Parliament of Uganda in 2012 passed the Prevention and Prohibition of Torture Act that imposes personal liability on security officers who are guilty of torture. This was one of the most progressive developments in our law books to deal with impunity under the cover of the Attorney General bearing the burden of rogue officers. Capacity needs to be built for citizens to access legal services so that they can sue rogue prisons officers who violate human rights.

Suffice to note, since 1962, Uganda Prisons Service is one public institution where one can feel growth and improvement albeit all the challenges of a resource-constrained country. In the last 30 years, UPS has professionalised in ways few correctional services in the third world have.

Today, the following courses are taught at the Prisons Training Academy: Non-Commissioned Officers Course, Junior Command Course for Non-Commissioned Officers to break into command ranks, Cadet Course, Intermediate Command and Staff Course and Command Officers Course. Since 2014, the Senior Command Staff Course is taught to prisons officers at the Police Training College in Bwebajja, Wakiso district. These courses are taught in few prisons services in Africa just like a few have human rights committees in every prison.

The promotion system is another check and balance system against abuse of power with impunity. An officer who has not spent at least three years would find it difficult to rise to the next rank where he has to spend another three years before rising to the next.

That is why before Etima, who served as CGP (1988-2004) rose to that rank, he had put in 22 years having joined in 1966. Byabashaija joined in 1983 and made it to the apex in 2005, after 22 years in the trenches. Career progress is, therefore, tied to prison officers’ discipline record but of course, the human race is yet to invent a perfect system so there may be cracks here and there.

On forced anal examinations

The USA raises an important issue of forced anal examinations. This is a valid concern although presented without context. It also got clouded in a desperate and shabby attempt to fit the sanctions around the context of homophobia. Now, Uganda Prisons Service still runs an archaic and degrading strip-down search on inmates upon admission. Everyone gets subjected to a strip-down before an officer who conducts a body search, takes measurements of height, weight, etc.

This gross practice has nothing to do with whether an inmate is a homosexual, bisexual, straight or undecided about their sexual orientation. In fact, all of Uganda’s feared Army Generals, high profile politicians, including ministers, once caged in by the criminal justice system, have had to lay their nakedness bare before those men and women in maroon uniform. It is a backward and dehumanising system provided for in the Standing Orders. It is, however, a poor man’s problem.

Ideally, every prison should have a scanner similar to those in airports. Such a scanner is only available at Kitalya Mini-Max Prison so the other 268 other facilities are stuck with this archaic system. The answer lies in the allocation of resources by Parliament and the Executive; avail funding for every prison to have scanners lest the system remains stuck with manual body search to find out who is hiding contra-band, drugs or other dangerous substances in their unmentionable organs.

This context ought to have informed the USA’s actions. Similarly, mention is made in the USA advisory that in 2020, homosexual inmates were denied access to legal counsel. As a researcher and lawyer who tried to access clients and information from prisons around that time, I can offer context. UPS implemented a radical restrictions regime to avert COVID-19 contagion. We were all denied access to our clients save in exceptional cases. The outcome?

Only three COVID-19 deaths of which two were admitted to prison with COVID-19. Whereas Ugandan society is generally homophobic, these restrictions in prisons during the COVID-19 era applied to all and sundry. Our friends’ human intelligence again, betrayed them. Neither facts nor context.

On congestion

Incidentally, I expected the USA to come hard on the congestion crisis in Uganda Prisons system. Uganda has over 60,000 inmates and congestion stands at 360%. Space designed for one inmate is shared by four people.

Luzira Upper Prison is designed for 600 inmates but holds 2,500, sometimes 3,000. This is an immoral and criminal treatment of a country’s prisoners.

UPS tries to make water available to deal with disease spread and ensure hygiene but this does not lessen the sheer indignity that Ugandan inmates are subjected to in such crowded facilities.

Efforts by the Judiciary to address case backlog have increased the ratio of convicted inmates to 52% and remand inmates to 48% but like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, we want more. There are prisons coming up in Rukungiri, Ntungamo, Isingiro, Mutuufu, Kamuli, Kiruhura, Yumbe, Amolatar under the Prisons Engineering Gang (gang because it has inmates and prisons staff comprising the unit). All these have been efforts under CGP Byabashaija’s leadership to address congestion.

Even with limited resources from the Treasury, the Service is making do with what it has; roofing materials sourced from the UPS 20-acre eucalyptus plantation in Gulu, bricks made by staff and inmates, sand and stones collected by the same team.

The sum total of all these interventions has led to a considerable decrease in human rights awards against UPS by the Uganda Human Rights Commission in the last 10 years. The correctional/rehabilitation as opposed to punitive approach to imprisonment has led to Uganda being ranked among countries with one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world (the rate at which inmates who are released commit offences again and return to jail).

Leaders who lead such transformation amid a hailstorm of challenges are rewarded, not sanctioned but of course, politics and interests, are blind to facts, logic and context. As Theodore Roosevelt put it, honour goes to the man in the arena. To Etima and Byabashaija, two men who have transformed our country’s prisons service, history shall be fairer and it is a story of honour and glory, service above self and duty to country.

Ivan Okuda is a writer and lawyer. He is a Master of Laws (Construction Law and Arbitration) student at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. He was a 2019 Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung Media Africa Scholar at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.