Silas Hategekimana, a
Rwandan man who spent weeks enduring physical and psychological torture in
Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI)’s torture chambers earlier
this year, has succumbed to the effects of the cruelty he was subjected to
during his detention.
He had spent 18 days in detention in Kampala
before he and 19 other Rwandan torture victims – most of them members of the
evangelical ADEPR Church – were dumped at the border with
Rwanda on June 12.
Unfortunately, Hategekimana, 43, ultimately
passed on over the weekend from the effects of torture, which he had testified
about shortly after he arrived from Uganda.
His family members said that a few days after
his arrival, he started to develop serious health complications.
“He began to experience loss of breath, pain in
the chest and in his right abdominal side,” a relative said.
He was subsequently admitted at Kacyiru
Hospital, from where he was transferred to Rwanda Military Hospital-Kanombe for
further examination. He was complaining of chest pain.
At RMH, a cardiologist examined him and
recommended an X-ray scan, to be done at Legacy Clinics.
But as he was being transported to Legacy
Clinics, which is located about 2km from the military hospital, on Saturday,
August 31, his condition rapidly deteriorated and passed away.
An autopsy report, whose copy The
New Times obtained, concluded that Hategekimana “had a
5th right rib fracture associated with silent old hemothorax, and right
lung abrasion. There was also presence of right kidney laceration and a
punctiform spleen wound with mild old hemoperitoneu.”
The report, signed by five experts including
two pathologists, describes the manner of his death as “unnatural” and states
the cause as “severe chest and abdominal blunt trauma.”
Hategekimana is survived by his wife Annonciata
Nyirahabimana and three children – two daughters and a son.
Nyarahabimana described her deceased husband as
a committed father, husband and Christian.
“He was only interested in volunteering for his
church and providing for his children,” said a grieving Nyirahabimana,
wondering why her husband was arbitrarily arrested and inflicted with deadly
injuries in Uganda.
The bereaved family lives in Gatenga, Kicukiro
District.
Hategekimana, who has his family’s breadwinner,
also leaves behind his mother.
In Kampala where he first arrived in 2009,
Hategekimana made a living from operating a motorcycle business before he was
abducted on May 25, this year.
The abductors turned out to be CMI operatives
and were working closely with agents of Rwandan terrorist outfit RNC of
fugitive Kayumba Nyamwasa, Hategekimana said in an emotional testimony in June.
The CMI men turned up at a church in the Kibuye
neighbourhood of Kampala and arrested Hategekimana along with other members of
the congregation.
The CMI agents did not identify themselves when
they were arresting them, he said.
They were bundled into a waiting vehicle with
tinted windows before their captors put hoods over their faces and sped off.
What followed was inhumane treatment by Ugandan
government security agents, working with elements “who spoke Kinyarwanda
fluently”.
He described as horrific his experience at the
hands of CMI and RNC operatives.
They were driven to CMI Headquarters in Mbuya,
a Kampala suburb.
“At Mbuya they first confiscated everything of
value we had on us; phones, money, wallets, and ordered us to take our shoes
and belts off,” Hategekimana recalled.
Then they were pushed inside a “sinister
looking corridor.”
“In that corridor the three of us weren’t able
to sleep for more than a few hours each day. It was cold and there was no
mattress and we had nothing to cover ourselves with, day and night.
“When they brought food, smelly kawunga (maize
meal), mixed with dirty-looking watery beans, they just threw the shabby plates
on the floor and walked out. “We ate that horrible food once a day, most of the
time we starved.”
One Rwandan who also endured torture in the
same place told journalists earlier this year that “there are always shouts and
cries emanating from the basement; some people are almost crazy with
agony.”
Their crime? A distraught Hategekimana told The
New Times back in June: “They accused us of being Rwandan
spies, claiming that ADEPR was a “Rwandan spying organisation, but we told them
that was never what we did; we only prayed and served God.”
Hategekimana and his colleagues are among
hundreds of Rwandans who have increasingly been arrested and subjected to
torture by Ugandan security, over false accusations of espionage or illegal
entry. Many have been released without trial, but hundreds others remain in
detention centres – some ungazetted – with no access to consular or legal
services.
Pastor John Karangwa, the ADEPR Church’s legal
representative, expressed dismay at the accusations of espionage against his
church members. “Being a Rwandan in Uganda has practically become a crime and
running a Rwandan-registered organisation there a crime too,” Karangwa said in
June. ADEPR is headquartered in Rwanda.
While in CMI detention, Hategekimana said, some
of their torturers spoke fluent Kinyarwanda; and that between beatings they
would try to force him and other victims to confess that they were “spying for
Kigali”.
He said CMI interrogators, together with RNC
agents, beat him severally with rifle butts, and was repeatedly forced to bend
and put his head between his legs.
At one point, the Kinyarwanda-speaking tormentors,
he said, tried to recruit him into RNC rebels.
“They told me I had to join to fight Rwanda,
but I told them at my years (43) I didn’t have the energy for that and,
besides, why would I fight my country which has done nothing wrong?”
That would prompt more beatings, he said.
More than two weeks after his arrest, he was
suddenly transferred to the Kireka CMI facility, which also serves as a halfway
house to release.
He said that his captors, perhaps realising
that he would never be of much use to them even if he were to be an RNC fighter
owing largely to his deteriorating condition as a result of sustained torture,
must have decided to drive him up to the Kagitumba Border Post and dump him
there empty-handed.
At Kireka, he said, he saw many Rwandans going
through the same traumatic experience. “One of the young men had gone mad due
to torture, I don’t think he will survive,” Hategekimana told journalists three
months before he succumbed to injuries of his own.
Subsequently, Hategekimana and eight other victims
sued the Ugandan government at the East African Court of Justice for abuse of
their rights and loss of property.
He died before justice could be served.
In August, President Paul Kagame and his
Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni signed a Memorandum of Understanding in
Luanda, Angola to resolve the standoff between the two countries but the
situation has barely improved weeks later.
In March, Kigali issued an advisory against travel to Uganda citing
continued harassment, illegal arrests, torture and irregular deportations of
Rwandan nationals in Uganda; Kampala’s active support to dissident and
terrorist groups bent on destabilising Rwanda, and economic sabotage.
The Rwandan government has said it can only
lift the travel advisory after Kampala has released all Rwandan nationals who
were arbitrarily arrested and thrown into torture chambers.
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