Editorial
End the shame of `safe houses�
coo
Members of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee met Tuesday with Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki and other senior judges to discuss the human rights situation in the country. Among the major issues they raised was the incongruously named �safe houses� where people are detained illegally by security forces and tortured.
�Safe houses� are one of the most abominable things to come to Uganda in recent years. Some of the stories about what happens in these safe houses are so shocking, it is impossible to believe that these things are happening today during the rule of the Movement government.
The war that the National Resistance Movement fought was primarily to end primitive human rights abuses. Uganda has seen its fair share of horror, and it was thought as cruelty comes and goes, nothing would ever surpass what happened in the death chambers of Field Marshall Idi Amin�s security forces.
The Movement leaders and military officers were supposed to be more enlightened, and it was taken for granted that we would never go back to the ways of Amin. We were wrong.
Now that the MPs are taking up the issue, everyone should join in and bring the issue of �safe houses� and the continued torture of detainees to the fore of public debate and action. The �safe houses� in Uganda must just close, and torture must end.
October 25, 2002 00:41:34
Gook
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