Africa-Press – Uganda. Several human rights abuses occur on the islands of Kalangala District due to lack of female police officers.
Ms Annuciate Nabbosa, the Community Development Officer of Kyamuswa Sub-county on Bukasa Island in Kalangala District, said some of the female suspects are prone to being sexually harassed by male police officers during arrest and in detention cells.
“There is really no privacy for the arrested female suspects. The male officers peep at us when bathing. Some of them may not understand us when we are in our monthly periods and some have gone ahead to sexually abuse us,” Ms Nabbosa said last week during a fact-finding tour by officials of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) on the islands.
But Mr Charles Nkirinawe, the Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Nkose Police Post on Mazinga Island, Kalangala District, said they have resorted to using senior women in their communities to help in arresting female suspects.
“When a female suspect commits an offense, as OC, I get a senior woman leader in her neighbourhood such as those on the LC1 committee and use them to effect the arrest of the female suspect. Even on reaching the station, I ask her (same leader) to search her (suspect). That is how I do it,” Mr Nkirinawe said.
He added: “When the senior female woman has gone back to her home, we use our wives to help out to watch the female suspects while they bathe and also help us in case they are in their monthly menstrual cycles.”
But Mr Nkirinawe said they sometimes encounter female suspects who demand that a female police officer be the one to effect the arrest, which he said complicates their work as police.
Likewise, Mr Emmanuel Bagenda, the OC of Kyamuswa Police Station on Bukasa Island, said: “For female suspects, what I normally do if it’s urgent, I move there and order her to move to the station. If she doesn’t cooperate, I get a senior woman in the community to help me effect the arrest. It’s a challenge when it comes to escorting them for a nature call. The good thing is that the women on the island are cooperative, not unruly.”
According to Section 23 (2) of the Police Act, a female person shall only be searched by an authorised woman. Equally, the Police Standing Orders demand that arrests of all female suspects should be handled by women police officers with strict adherence to decency and that they should not be chained. Although in Kalangala, stubborn female suspects are chained as a preventive measure.
Ms Maria Theresa Nabulya, the spokesperson of the Judicial Service Commission, who was part of the delegation that traversed the islands last week, promised to include in her report the need to have female police officers deployed.
Access to justice
“We have heard your issues concerning access to justice, especially the non-deployment of women police officers to the Islands. We are going to write a report and give it to our bosses for action,” Ms Nabulya said last week.
The other challenge that the residents in the islands face in accessing justice is the lack of readily available and cheap transport means to travel to Kalangala Magistrates’ Court. This, the residents said, has seen majority of their cases dismissed for lack of follow-up by the complainants.
“There is lack of communication with the complainants when the suspects are taken to Kalangala. The court is forced to dismiss the cases because the complainant wasn’t able to follow up due to lack of transport,” Mr Nkirinawe said.
The distance from the majority of the islands to the main island of Kalangala is averagely about 50 kilometres, which needs one to use about Shs80,000 as transport while using a public boat.
Weak police cells that have seen some of the hard-core suspects break through and escape, suspects attempting to throw themselves into water while being transported to Kalangala main island, and lack of courts in the islands, are the other challenges hindering access to justice in the islands.
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