The jailed former presidential candidate, Dr Kizza Besigye, has written to the Chief Justice Bart Katureebe, seeking his intervention to deal with what the Opposition leader calls injustice in the courts and in particular, the Deputy Chief Justice Steven Kavuma, who heads the Constitutional Court.
Now on remand for a month since May 11 on treason charges, Dr Besigye faces the prospect of being tried within the premises of Luzira prison if an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) succeeds in court on Wednesday.
The last time Dr Besigye was scheduled to appear before a magistrate at Nakawa court over the treason charges, the DPP, citing what he called security threats, applied that Dr Besigye should instead be tried in Luzira prison.
The Opposition leader was not produced in court that day and the magistrate set Wednesday, June 15, to rule on where Dr Besigye will appear for trial.
“It appears increasingly that I might be tried in secret and that the court will be facilitated to handle my matter in Luzira Prison,” reads Dr Besigye’s letter to Chief Justice Katureebe.
In his missive titled “complaint about mistreatment”, Dr Besigye singles out Mr Katureebe’s colleague, Deputy Chief Justice Kavuma, for issuing an ex parte order on April 29, which “included two very strange decisions.” The order arose from an application by the Attorney General (AG) and was issued in the presence of the Deputy AG Mwesigwa Rukutana.
The “very strange” decisions, Dr Besigye said, were to bar the magistrate at Kasangati court from ruling on whether his confinement at his residence in Kasangati by police was legal. He said Justice Kavuma’s order was also calculated to prevent the hearing of a civil suit Dr Besigye had filed in the High Court seeking removal of the police from his home to regain his freedom and enforce his other rights.
The police laid siege on Dr Besigye’s house shortly after the election, detaining him at his home for more than 40 days. The police claimed he would foment public disorder if he were allowed to get out of his home.
The petition he filed at the Magistrate’s Court in Kasangati was similar to the one he had filed in 2011 during the Walk-to-Work protests, as a result of which the court ordered the police to vacate his home.
“While I found it fit to attempt to secure my rights using the Constitution and the Courts of Judicature, Mr Kavuma and the Attorney General saw it best to deny me that avenue and effectively surrender me back to the whims of the Uganda Police Force,” Dr Besigye’s letter to the CJ reads in part.
“The effect of Mr Kavuma’s orders was to perpetuate my detention without trial,” Dr Besigye tells Chief Justice Katureebe.
Apart from the incidents Dr Besigye complains about, Mr Kavuma has also been criticised for some other decisions, including the order that removed Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago from office just hours after his reinstatement by the High Court.
Later, after Mr Lukwago won re-election to the office in February this year, the Lord Mayor had to rush to court to apply to “arrest judgment” as Justice Kavuma prepared to rule on an application to block him and other elected local government leaders in Kampala from being sworn in.
Let “good men” speak out
In the seven-page letter delivered to the Chief Justice’s office on June 1, Dr Besigye makes an impassioned plea to Mr Katureebe to take action and save him from injustice meted on him through the courts of law.
“My experiences may be viewed as personal to me,” Dr Besigye writes, “However, in my own analysis of the political landscape in Uganda, it is critical to keep in mind, while considering whether to attend to this letter or not, the words of Edmund Burke, who said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Dr Besigye urges the Chief Justice “to recall the political events in Uganda’s history, including those that affected the office you currently occupy.”
Here, he was referring to the fate of the late Benedicto Kiwanuka, the former chief justice who, during Idi Amin’s rule in 1972, was picked from his office and killed. His remains have never been found to date.
Dr Besigye, who has on numerous occasions accused sections of Uganda’s elite class of failing to stand up in defence of human rights and civil liberties, borrowed a famous quotation from a reputed poet to make his point to Mr Katureebe.
“I am reminded in that context about the words of Martin Niemoller to whom a powerful poetic speech is attributed: ‘First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist; then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist; then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew; then they came for me – and there was no one to speak for me’.”
Long battle with Museveni
Formerly comrades in the Bush War enjoying a cordial doctor-patient relationship, the duels between Dr Besigye and President Museveni have dominated Uganda’s political space since late 2000, when Dr Besigye first declared that he would challenge his former commander-in-chief for the presidency. He has since challenged President Museveni in four consecutive elections since 2001, and he has on each of the four occasions blamed his defeat on rigging and other illegal acts.
In 2001 and 2006, the Opposition leader challenged the outcome of the elections in the Supreme Court, and on both occasions, the court ruled that the elections were flawed in a number of respects. On both occasions, however, the elections were upheld on majority verdict, with most of the judges arguing that the irregularities did not substantially affect the final outcomes.
Dr Besigye vowed not to return to the court over rigged elections after 2006, accusing the court of failing to annul an election even after acknowledging that it was not free or fair.
Indeed in the 2011 election, he did not petition court.
2011 elections
In his letter to the Chief Justice, Dr Besigye says the 2011 election saw “unprecedented use of money” and Mr Museveni won unfairly. He says he did not go to the courts, but instead opted for Walk-to-Work protests.
As the police held him at his home shortly after the February 18 election, Dr Besigye said he needed to be freed to compile evidence and decide whether to challenge the election or not, but he was kept under confinement until time elapsed.
He was later arrested in Kampala City centre on May 11, having beaten security surveillance to get there and a video of him being “sworn in” as president was later circulated on You Tube and social media.
Dr Besigye, in his letter to CJ Katureebe, narrates how he was incarcerated first at Nalufenya in Jinja, then flown to Moroto in Karamoja, where he was charged with treason after working hours. He would later be transferred to Luzira prison and then produced at Nakawa Magistrate’s Court, where he was charged afresh with treason without representation of a lawyer because the court changed the scheduled time for his appearance from 9am to 8am. He lists several alleged manipulations of the court processes by the State in order to deny him justice and perpetuate violation of his rights and freedoms with impunity.
