Who does not remember when Kampala City Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago cried like a baby when some unruly police officers squeezed his private parts?
“What pains me most is that I’ve been dehumanized, I’ve been a subject of ridicule. It pains me, it has gone deep into my heart. I was charged with unlawfully assembly outside my home and I was not given an opportunity to seek medical attention,” Lukwago told the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) in 2017, days after the incident.
Now, the Lord Mayor has a reason to smile because the former leader of his tormentors Gen Kale Kayihura is not doing well at all due to his current woes.
Last Friday, the United States Government issued travel and economic sanctions against the former Uganda Police Chief and his immediate family members.
They accused him of gross violations of human rights under Section 7031(c) of the FY 2019 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, according to US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
However, to Lukwago, no opposition member in the country should feel sorry for Kayihura because during his tenure, he harassed and tortured them.
“During his reign, our private parts were squeezed… he had us cry, restricted our movements. Which prison haven’t we been detained in? Unknown gazetted houses? He can’t say he was acting on orders from ‘above’. He has to own up,” he said during a TV interview on Tuesday.
“If you understand what we’ve gone through, and the magnitude of the challenges we are grappling with, you’d be in a celebratory mood right now.”
Speaking about the sanctions, Kayihura said the USA accusations against him were false because he never did anything wrong as a Police Chief, a position he served from 2005 to 2018.
“This is not only absolutely false but outrageous and infuriating, especially that these accusations and decisions have been made without according me an opportunity to respond to them, whereby I would give evidence to the contrary. The United States Government was known as a government that believed in due process, rule of law and democracy,” he said.
Still Lukwago is not convinced with Kayihura’s defence.
“Kale Kayihura had taken a very low key profile and suddenly he comes out to pen a defence which he puts in the court of public opinion. Right now, Kayihura carries a tag of a very dangerous person globally. He is a social deviant. An outcast,” he said.
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