Photo by Courtney Chance, AP Fellow 2009. Location: Kotido, Uganda (Karamoja). Partner: CECORE/IANSA

Photo by Courtney Chance, AP Fellow 2009. Location: Kotido, Uganda (Karamoja). Partner: CECORE/IANSA

Unfortunately, food shortage in Karamoja is causing the security situation to deteriorate. Once again, arms and ammunition trading is on the rise. I want to bring attention to an article published in the East African yesterday.

To read the article, please click on the following link: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/DKAN-7WZMV4?OpenDocument#

The New Vision (29 July 2009) front page headline:  “Police Boss Free of Wife’s Murder”

The release of James Peter Aurien, a former Mukono district police commander accused of killing his wife, is an indictment against both the Ugandan judicial system and law enforcement. In a gross miscarriage of justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to withdraw the case against Aurien after the prosecution’s star witness, the deceased’s sister, ‘mysteriously disappeared’.  

Suspecting infidelity, police boss Aurien allegedly shot his wife, Christine Apolot, on April 20, 2008. Police Sgt. James Adang showed up at Aurien’s residence after hearing the gunshot.  Upon arrival, Adang found Aurien loading Apolot into his vehicle. Aurien claimed that his wife had injured herself, and he had to get her medical care. Aurien did not, however, take his wife to the hospital. Instead, after allegedly disposing of his wife’s body, he eluded a national manhunt for a week before turning himself in to authorities.  If this evidence were not enough, Helen Ruth Akello, Apolot’s sister, was present at the scene of the crime and is reported to have witnessed the incident firsthand.

Unfortunately, Akello has disappeared, so how would the court resolve this? Set the police commander free, of course. 

Aurien is no stranger to controversy. He was accused by fellow officer Baker Isabirye of defiling her young housekeeper.   After filing the charges against Aurien, Isabirye, of the Wandegeya Family Protection Unit, claims she received letters threatening to blackmail her.  I have been unable to confirm what became of these charges. Needless to say, the red flags went unheeded, and Aurien was neither stripped of his badge nor his firearm.

The blatant impunity for domestic violence offenders is astounding, especially when the accused is in a position of power. Upon leaving the courtroom on Wednesday, Aurien was embraced by his legislative counterpart, MP Akbar Godi, who also stands accused of using a firearm to murder his spouse. The day before her death, Godi’s wife, Rehema Caesar Nasur, had complained to police that her husband was threatening to kill her. It was the second time she had filed such a complaint. No action was taken by the police.

At this point, perhaps the most important question is, “What has become of Helen Ruth Akello?”  Police have been unable to trace her whereabouts, and there is speculation that she may have been bribed or threatened to convince her to leave the country–that is, assuming she is still alive and not being forcibly detained. It is inconceivable that Akello would willfully not show up to testify on her sister’s behalf. The justice system utterly failed in its duty to provide witness protection services to Ms. Akello.

I hope she knows, however, that there are others who will stand in her place, others who will carry the banner in the name of Christine Alopot and Rehema Nasur and the multitudes of other women who are victims of intimate partner violence. I am Helen Ruth Akello. And, hopefully, you are too. We will take the stand in her place, and if Aurien wants this to go away, he will have to silence us all. For the women of Uganda and beyond, this is a call to action: a call to fight corruption in law enforcement, a call to fight for witness protection, a call to demand tougher gun control, a call to halt and disarm domestic violence.

On my first full day working at CECORE, I had the pleasure of attending the national launch of IANSA’s Disarming Domestic Violence Campaign. In coordination with UANSA, CECORE organized a panel to discuss the symbiotic relationship that exists between domestic violence and small arms availability.  The following blog entry describes the day’s events and contains video clips from the participants.* I had initially planned to also write more on the status of the current draft Domestic Violence Act that was recently tabled by the Ugandan parliament. After numerous appeals over the past two weeks to obtain a copy of the legislation, however, I just now (this morning) received the document. Legislation on domestic violence is to be applauded as a welcome and much-needed measure, and the draft does finally provide accountability for marital rape, but it is lacking in so many other areas. I decided that to discuss it properly, I should feature it in a separate entry, so the following entry is Part One of Two.

Panelists from left to right are Maria Matembe, Rose Othieno, Richard Mugisha, and Joe Burua

Panelists from left to right are Maria Matembe, Rose Othieno, Richard Mugisha, and Joe Burua

On Friday, June 19, The Centre for Conflict Resolution (CECORE) and the Uganda Action Network on Small Arms (UANSA) co-sponsored the national launch of the Disarming Domestic Violence (DDV) Campaign in a conference room at the Royal Imperial Hotel in downtown Kampala.  The event featured expert panelists who spoke about the intersecting problems of domestic violence and small arms in Uganda. Rose Othieno, director of CECORE, and Richard Mugisha, UANSA coordinator, represented civil society organizations, while Miria Matembe, a former MP and Minister of Ethics and Integrity, and Joe Burua, the current director of the National Focal Point on Small Arms, provided insight into the government’s response to this problem.

Rose Othieno of CECORE introduces the campaign

Rose Othieno of CECORE introduces the campaign

Miria Matembe concurred that domestic violence in Uganda is treated as almost a “normal thing” and that officials, from police to the courts to parliament, have thus far been hesitant to take meaningful action to halt violence against women. She equates the problem with women’s overall lack of power and inferior status within society and pointed to the fact that men use small arms to maintain psychological and economic control over their spouses. Citing a recent incident from news reports, Matembe explained that women often resist leaving or pressing charges against an abusive spouse because they fear that they will not be able to support themselves financially on their own.

While Joe Burua agreed that the proliferation of small arms has led to increased levels of violence and insecurity in the region, he failed to recognize the disproportionate share of the burden that women must bear. He expressed doubts about the statistics that Ms. Othieno presented (statistics courtesy of IANSA, the World Health Organization, and The American Journal of Public Health), and he proceeded to claim that in Karamoja, women are as much to blame for gun violence as men. Rose Othieno rebutted, “We have facts to prove that women are more affected than men…The facts about who holds the gun is clear. Very few women hold the guns.” While the audience in the conference room seemed to concur with Othieno, Burua’s perspective is echoed by many Ugandans and has been a stumbling block for women’s groups seeking to put gun violence against women on the national agenda.

Matembe fields questions from television, radio, and newspaper reporters

Matembe fields questions from television, radio, and newspaper reporters

Miria Matembe spoke to the hearts of many frustrated Ugandan women when she passionately declared, “As long as the women continue to be marginalized, oppressed, and exploited…until the status of women is raised so that they are considered to be full human beings in their right, as long as society looks at them as just private people who can be violated…then the issue of domestic violence will always continue…The whole issue of domestic violence is an issue of power relations…and the gun compounds the issue of power.”

The audience, consisting primarily of representatives from the media and other civil society organizations, filled the conference room and readily expressed support for the campaign. The event received coverage on several local radio stations and appeared in an article in Monday’s edition of The Daily Monitor, a major national newspaper.

<

< >

*My apologies for occasional shakiness and awkward angles with the camera-I was trying to avoid being overly obtrusive while sharing a small space three other camcorder operators.