First indication of Fotofestival Naarden 2013, on the walls of the fortress of the city of Naarden, with photo from the series “Down and Out in the South”.
Photo (c) Eduard Planting.
First indication of Fotofestival Naarden 2013, on the walls of the fortress of the city of Naarden, with photo from the series “Down and Out in the South”.
Photo (c) Eduard Planting.
Luzira Upper Prison in Kampala, Uganda’s biggest max security prison. Built to accomodate 600, on March 3, 2013, it houses 3114: 1376 convicts plus 388 on Death Row, and 1350 on remand. University level education in prison: Business Statistics, part of study Small Business Management (4 semesters). The men in white are on Death Row.
On March 19, I received an email from a Ugandan PhD student at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, named Andrew Akampurira. Thirty-year-old Andrew received a masters degree in Sweden and Norway (Erasmus Mundus Masters in Applied Ethics) and had read my previous blog post about Susan Kigula and her attempts to get the death sentence in Uganda abolished. He is writing a thesis about capital punishment and asked if I had ever heard of a man named Eddy Mary Mpagi who was sentenced to death for murder but was wrongly convicted. Andrew explained that after 18 years on death row in Luzira prison, Mr. Mpagi was released after confirmation was received that the murder victim was alive and well.
I had not known about Mpagi but some brief research told me that in 1981, during Dictator Idi Amin’s rule, Mpagi and his cousin Fred Masembe were arrested for allegedly robbing and then murdering George William Wandyaka, a neighbor in Masaka city. On on 29th April 1982, the high court in Masaka convicted both men and sentenced them to death. They were taken to Luzira Upper Prison in Kampala to await their execution. A request for pardon in 1983 remained unanswered. In 1985, Fred Masembe died in prison. He had been suffering from asthma, stomach pains, depression, physical and mental anguish.
No executions have been carried out since 1999, but Edward remembers several that took place during his incarceration. “No one was ever given any notice that they would be executed,” he has written. “Each time we were taken by complete surprise. We lived in complete fear of any unusual activity from the wardens.” (Source: here)
Despite the conviction of these men, reported sightings of William Wandyaka were made on several occasions however no one in law enforcement paid attention, they ignored this information. Private investigators hired by a man named Father Agostoni, an Italian missionary, began an investigation and in 1989 they confirmed that the men had been wrongly accused. Local authorities now convinced of the men’s innocence, wrote to the attorney general seeking pardon for Mpagi and Masembe. However, despite this action, Eddie Mary Mpagi remained on death row for another 11 years. The attorney generals kept changing and the judge working on the case died. Finally, in 2000, Mpagi was pardoned. Apparently Wandyaka’s parents held a grudge against Mpagi’s parents. They had staged the murder to hurt them. A doctor had received a bribe to testify that he had carried out a post-mortem on the alleged victim’s body. Wandyaka, the “murder victim” died of natural causes in 2002.
After Edward’s release from prison in 2000, he launched a project – now under the auspices of the Dream One World Foundation – to build schools and orphanages for children who have lost parents in the AIDS epidemic and children who have a parent on death row. Edward also tries to publicize the terrible conditions on Uganda’s death row.
Andrew Akampurira, the man who sent me the email, recently conducted an interview with Mr. Mpagi and plans to have a meeting with Susan Kigula soon. He hopes that the death penalty is abolished in Uganda in the next 15 years at the latest.
We – my intern Kim Verkade and I – take a taxi to downtown Kampala. Halfway, we are stopped by a police woman in a pristine white uniform. She tells the driver to show his license and seems somewhat annoyed when she finds out that there is nothing wrong with it. She then asks him (as the driver told us later): “So what is wrong with your car?” He knows he has to come up with something: “The left front tire is not so good.”
She is satisfied now and tells the driver to walk with her to the back of the car. In the rearview mirror, I see money change hands. After some negotiating, he has managed to talk it down to ten thousand Ugandan shillings: about three and a half US dollar. She instructs him: “don’t tell the muzungus (whites)!” Back in the car, the driver explains: “The police will stop you often, these days. It is the time to pay the school fees”.
According to the latest East Africa Bribery Index, the Uganda Police Force is the most bribery-prone institution in the five East African Community partner states (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda). Bribery was demanded or “suggested” from about 75% of the people seeking service from the police. On a positive note, though: the amounts involved were generally not impressive: considering the average payment made, the police only ranked 24th.
Generally, the East Africa Bribery Index shows that Uganda institutions have continued to decline in the fight against graft. Overall, the country is ranked second after Burundi. Among the region’s top 10 most bribery-prone institutions are four Ugandan institutions: Police, Judiciary, Uganda Revenue Authority and the Ministry of Public Service. The Uganda Prisons improved slightly, in absolute terms and in the Ugandan ranking: they moved from fifth to seventh.
p.s. The police officers in the photos have nothing to do with the story above and I don’t want to imply that they are corrupt.
Yesterday morning, March 7, I arrived back from Uganda. On Tuesday, March 12, from 7 to 8 PM, I will be in a one-hour long interview on Dutch public-service broadcaster NTR, Radio 5. The programme is called OBA live and the interviewer is Naeeda Aurangzeb, born in Pakistan but living in the Netherlands since she was 3. She has previously been working in the US and in Israel and wrote a book about Palestinian refugees (in Dutch only), called “Verdreven Palestijnen”.
The interview will be in Dutch and can be heard (and seen) via OBA Live.