RIGHTS-UGANDA: Mob Justice On The Rise

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mustafa Amin

KAMPALA, Sep 11 1999 (IPS) - Rights groups and police in Uganda are alarmed at the increasing cases of mob justice in the country where the public, enraged by the government’s failure to curb crime, is taking the law into its own hands.

Hardly a day passes without reports of mob justice in the East African country.

“We killed him, because we knew if he is handed over to police he would be released the next day,” says a man who took part in lynching a thief in Bukoto, a suburb of the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

Police reports say up to 30 people had been killed by angry mobs last month alone, most of them suspected wizards and petty thieves. Six of the suspects were killed in the capital, while scores escaped death only after they were rescued by the police.

In 1995, up to 37 suspected witches were killed in the eastern district of Mbale, prompting the police to warn the public to desist from such killings.

Police say the rate of deaths caused by mob justice is on the rise and warn that tough action will be taken against the perpetrators. “The rate of mob justice is too much, at least there are two cases of mob justice reported to police everyday,” says deputy police commander, Benson Oyo Nyeko .

“We are investigating why mob justice is on the increase. We are no longer calling it mob justice but all those who will be apprehended will be charged with murder,” he says.

Rights watchdog groups say, although mob justice is wrong and punishable by law, corruption within Uganda’s judicial system and the police force is to blame for the killings.

“The judicial process is long and sometimes costly, forcing the public to take the law in their hands, which it is wrong,” says Lugaba Husein of the Kampala-based Human Rights Network (Hurinet), a non-governmental organisation (ngo).

Husein, who is also the president of Uganda’s Makerere University’s Law Society, says the public often complains about suspected thieves walking on the streets within hours of their arrest, after bribing their way to freedom.

“This has disappointed the public and yet, in some of the cases, there is no evidence to incriminate the thieves,” he says.

Under Ugandan laws, it must be “proven beyond reasonable doubt”, with exhibits, that a suspect is guilty, an exercise which has been described by the public as a waste of time.

“The same people (thieves) keep on coming back, it is better to kill them once and for all instead of taking them to the police where justice will not be done,” says Isaac Kasumba, a resident of Kampala.

Such statements have prompted the government of President Yoweri Museveni to set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Corruption in the police.

Since it was set up in May, witnesses have provided overwhelming evidence on corruption in the force, with some calling for the scrapping of the entire police force.

This is not the first time the public has resorted to mob justice to punish suspects. Between 1971-1979, under the regime of former dictator Iddi Amin, mob justice was an accepted norm of punishing wrong doers in society.

Many were burnt or stoned to death until 1979 when the practice was outlawed, after the overthrow of the Amin regime by former President Milton Obote.

Many Ugandans say Amin’s decision to condone mob justice had reduced criminality between 1971-1979, and are demanding that the practice be reinstated to curb the growing crime in Uganda.

Police say although the rate of mob justice in the East African country is growing at an alarming rate, their efforts to curb the vice is being frustrated by lack of co-operation by the public.

“By the time the Police reach the scene of murder, there is no evidence to implicate the victim (killed) or any complainant, but only the body,” says a police spokesman.

Mob justice is not only confined to Uganda, but it also exists in neighbouring Tanzania, where more than 350 people had been killed in the past one and a half years by angry mobs, accusing them of witchcraft.

“The victims, most of who were old men and women, were killed by villagers who accused them of practicing witchcraft to kill or inflict curses on their loved ones,” says a recent report by Tanzania’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

The report says an average of 21 murders each month are linked to superstition in Tanzania.