Amnesty not substitute for due legal process

Feb 20, 2007

That more People’s Redemption Army (PRA) suspects are being released, having applied for amnesty, may on the surface look like a good thing. The effect of their long detention on their immediate families and dependents had become unbearable.

That more People’s Redemption Army (PRA) suspects are being released, having applied for amnesty, may on the surface look like a good thing. The effect of their long detention on their immediate families and dependents had become unbearable.

Due to the extended family system in our culture, at least 50 or more people who depended on the suspects were also in detention because the bread winners were in custody. Because the detention of the suspects was illegal, the suspects were like hostages. Therefore the innocent dependants were subjected to economic, social and psychological torture.

Some of the suspects would have learnt that while in detention, their beloved mothers and fathers died of broken hearts, children had missed education and wives ran away with other men.

With no realistic prospect of an early release, having been denied bail two times, and having heard both President Museveni and security minister Amama Mbabazi declare that they would only be released if they applied for amnesty, the PRA suspects had no option but to take up the only available route to freedom. The fundamental problem with that route is that to be released, the suspects had to confess to a crime or crimes they may or may not have committed.

Ugandans have seen it happen before. In the 1970s, dictator Idi Amin made former ministers Alex Ojera, Joshua Wakholi, Erinayo Oryema and Oboth Ofumbi, Archbishop Luwum and several other officials to confess before television cameras to being guerrillas. Some of them were then paraded before foreign diplomats before being murdered in cold blood.

The confession by the PRA suspects may boost the ego of the people in power. In the shorter term, it is a signal that the government is almost certain to prove to itself that the PRA did indeed exist.

However, the use of confession, rather than due legal process, to administer justice, is a clear signal that the rule of law is dead and Uganda is set on a slippery slope towards state collapse.

It is rare in any culture for a man to cry in public. It is even more rare if that man has been a soldier as Dr. Besigye once was. Therefore, when Besigye wept in court recently, it was not for himself. He was crying for his and our beloved country.
The writer is the FDC International Envoy to the UK and EU

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