The State is the constitutive virtual power of a polity (citizens) with a geographically defined bounds. A government is the administrative levers (or machinery) that functionalise or delivers or exercises the constituted power of the State. A group of people running the manifest mechanics of the government through policy origination, superintendence and oversight may be called the ruling party. The word ‘constitutive’ denotes the limitations (in the French Language sense of the word ‘limite’ meaning boundary); like geographical bounds, moral, acceptability and recognition by (and expectations from) other polities.
Because State power is about citizens; the ruling party holds State power under a trusteeship mandate. This trusteeship is limited or regulated by the administrative processes and procedures of government and legislation. All these regulatory regimes are based on the history, aspirations, culture and traditions of a polity expressed and frozen in a constitution. This constitution could be coded (written) or embedded in cultural norms and traditions. Therefore, government actions, be they for State security or other, are functionalised or taken in the name of the citizens. Anything short of that just renders the ruling group or party an occupation force.
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The police is the principal arresting agency of the State (please note that arrest is a purely administrative function with laid down procedures). The principal end user of ‘information’ collected by the police is the courts of law. And because courts don’t admit evidence based on information collected through torture, police is obliged to source dust-free information. Mr Erias Lukwago was arrested last Monday. That’s normal. However, the people who arrested him were not police and his lawyers have said the police denied responsibility for his arrest. Which is why I am inclined to join the corner of those who say Lukwago was kidnapped.
Mr Lukwago is the former Lord Mayor of Kampala Capital City and Dr Kizza Besigye’s lawyer in a high-stakes treason case. Mr Lukwago is said to have told his lawyers that he was tortured. At a very personal level, this torture is very disturbing for me. I am very sensitive to torture. I don’t care who is the victim or the perpetrator; I just abhor torture. Good thing for me is that I have been a victim and perpetrator of torture. That’s why, with my experience, I should speak out against torture. The folly of the torture perpetrator is seeking to express his power in or from the powerlessness of the torture victim. Such power is so corrupted that it is not satisfying. It is even worse when such power is delegated. It manifests like a madman trying to define the illusory boundaries of his madness.
A torture perpetrator may try to express his power over an already powerless torture victim. However, the power of the victim’s powerlessness tends to overpower the power of the perpetrator in a manner only a madman would not appreciate. Beyond physical and psychological torture, what can a torture perpetrator do: kill the victim? Of course that would not be satisfying. And then what?
Here is my temoignage (French: testimony). Authorities of a neighbouring country declared me a security nuisance. I was arrested and thrown into a three-by-six-foot rectangular cell. They removed all my clothes, tied my legs, arms and left me in the cell for 96 hours. Only a bona fide Mukonzo tribesman can survive this.
When they came to pick me (to parade me before the media), they found me wallowing in my human excreta and urine. Incidentally, I was too weak to even sit upright; least said of standing up. Neither did I have the energy to clean myself. Other detainees were brought in to clean me and later a doctor to stabilise me. Yet that’s not the only things they did to me. They did more; some of which I have conditioned myself to take to the grave (if there will be one). I don’t want such a situation to happen to anyone; spy or civil rights activist or political opponent or other. We are human beings; and no amount of passion for nationalism or patriotism or our leaders should push one to do what ‘they’ did to me. No. It is wrong.