He Pointed a Gun At My Husband and Ordered Him To Drive!

After the events that unfolded on 18th November, 2020, we were left disgusted by the brutality and high-handedness of the police in Uganda. This must end! We are a peaceful nation. The answer should be order not aggression. We are adding our voice on the #EndPoliceBrutalityinUganda campaign by publishing first and second person experiences of some of the victims of this brutality. If you’ve been brutalized by the police, or know someone who has, feel free to share your experience via satisfashionug@gmail.com.

No one was immune to the high-handedness of the police, even when there was a child in the picture. Maggie (not real names), was barred from taking her ailing 5-month-old son to the hospital.
She shares her story:

“Our boy woke up feeling unwell, so we decided to take him to hospital. His paediatrician is still within our home area, so we couldn’t possibly have been affected by the riots. We got to hospital and the paed was unable to leave Mulago and come to Luzira where the hospital is. So, we were seen by another paed who determined that we needed to go to another hospital because he was suspecting something that needed to be confirmed by another doctor who happens to be at Nakasero. We sighed and tried to brave the journey to Nakasero.

But guess what? We were stopped by the military police at Electoral Commission and told that no one was welcome into the city center. No amount of explanation regarding where we were headed convinced them to let us go. It didn’t even matter that the sick child was there with us, and he was visibly sick… nope! Their orders were not to let anyone, including a 5-month-old child that needed medical care, to access the cross to the central business district. We made calls to the “big people” that we know, with hope that they were would speak to someone to let us through but their response was “it is a busy time. Things are out of our hands.”

The more we pleaded with them, the more pissed off the military men got. When we tried a little more, one of them pointed a gun at my husband and ordered him to drive. Would you look at that? Our ability to afford private health care, private transportation, and to live in a town where riots are unlikely to reach did not protect us from being hurt by the ongoing political unrest. No Ugandan is safe until we all area!”

satisfashionug@gmail.com