Rights bodies call for torture victims compensation

By Moses Walubiri

KAMPALA - Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) in partnership with the Coalition Against Torture – a loose coalition of human rights organization fighting torture – has petitioned Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga over government’s failure to compensate victims of torture for cases going as far back as 2003.

In their petition on Tuesday in which they decried the spate of torture incidents in places of detention despite Uganda’s ratification of the international convention against the vice, UHRC called for the expeditious compensation of the 266 torture victims for violation of their rights.

“A strict policy should be put in places of detention and elsewhere to eliminate incidents of torture,” Dr. Amooti Katebalirwe, a commissioner at UHRC said while presenting the petition, adding, “We are concerned that torture survivors in this country still face a lot of obstacles when seeking justice and reparation.”

Kadaga committed the petition to the relevant committee of parliament promising to moot an action plan on compensating all torture victims.

“We shall have an opportunity with ministry of justice and ensure that an action plan is put in place to compensate these people,” Kadaga said.

UHRC tribunals have over the last 10 years awarded sh3b to 266 torture victims in compensation, with the principal sum accumulating interest as government struggles to pay them.

Early this year, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Kahinda Otafire, told legislators that his ministry is saddled with sh254b in compensation claims that is accumulating interest yet ministry of finance has earmarked a paltry sh4b in the financial year 2013/14 to clear the backlog.

Last year, President Yoweri Museveni assented to the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Act, 2012 signaling government’s commitment to international and regional conventions against torture that it has ratified over the years.

The new law seeks to make perpetrators of torture to incur individual liability so that compensation awards have a deterrent effect.

However, the law seems not to have had an immediate effect with the 2012 human rights report ‘accusing’ police officers of being the worst perpetrators of torture, especially in detention centers.

Uganda will today join the rest of the world to commemorate the UN International Day in Support of Torture Victims under the theme, “implement the Anti-torture law now: Compensate torture survivors.”