Africa-Press – Uganda. Internal Affairs minister, Maj Gen Severino Kahinda Otafiiire deserves every salutation for speaking frankly about a rarely spoken and painful reality – the prejudiced profiling of Muslims as terrorists by our security services.
As a society, we should be ashamed that we remain largely quiet while young Muslims are indiscriminately kidnapped by State security agents, ending up in torture dens or left to languish in our prisons without trial. The law is clear: where you suspect an individual, lawfully detain and arraign them in court, then prosecute where credible evidence can be adduced. Where suspected terrorists pose a direct threat to law enforcement there are also clear rules of engagement even amidst what is sometimes described as the ‘fog of war’.
To profile an entire community as terrorists, just because they profess the Islamic faith, is indefensible, insensitive, inhuman and against the law.
Where the rule of law is under threat, views like those expressed by the minister this Wednesday are illuminating and judicious. The soils of this blood-stained pearl of Africa have soaked up enough innocent blood. Blood spilled as a consequence of state-inspired violence against citizens.
As the President has himself acknowledged elsewhere, there is no place for the indiscriminate victimisation of persons. This is why we have inherent human rights recognised in our Constitution.
Under the Bill of Rights enshrined in Chapter Four of the supreme law, those inherent rights are sacrosanct. They are not granted by the State; they are non-derogable and cannot be taken away at a whim. They include the right to non-discrimination, equality before the law, privacy, life, protection from torture and above all; the right to a fair, speedy and public hearing before an independent and impartial court or legally established tribunal.
We invite those security officers who may plead ignorance of the law to educate themselves with readings from Articles 21, 22, 24, 27, 28 and 44 of our Constitution.
When members of the Muslim community feel insecure because they are being targeted it should concern us all. Terrorism is an insidious and barbaric crime against our collective humanity. It must be rejected, fought and punished in the most unequivocal terms as by law prescribed. But you do not fight terrorism using labels and visiting mayhem on entire communities in the vain hope that your preconceived notions about their guilt will vindicate your equally criminal actions.
Our starting point in the fight against terrorism is to expose the false ideology that its perpetrators use to justify their barbarism and bigotry; the fallacy that Islamic teachings enjoin the faithful to shed the blood of innocents in the name of Allah.
When the security services depart from the law and begin to target citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, it becomes difficult to distinguish between them and the real terrorists.
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