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Tales of Torture from Karamoja: “I thought ‘Let them just kill me'”

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Dokomoi Woyakapel (left) and his son Woyakapel Achola (right). Image by Marc Hofer. Uganda, 2011.

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Dokomoi Woyakapel's damaged hand after member of the Ugandan Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF) hit his fingers with sticks so long and so hard until they had to be amputated. Image by Marc Hofer. Uganda, 2011.

When Dokomoi Woyakapel heard that his son had been arrested by the army on suspicion of owning an illegal gun, he set off to the neighboring barracks to plead for his release.

About 70 years old and half-blind with cataracts, Woyakapel thought he could explain that a mistake had been made and that his son was innocent.

“I went to inquire how it came that they had arrested my boy,” Woyakapel says. “Immediately when I got to the barracks I was arrested and detained by the army. They tied up my legs and beat out my teeth and beat my hands.” As he speaks he stretches out his hands to reveal a crushed right index finger.

Woyakapel says that the soldiers claimed he was the one responsible for sending his sons out on cattle raids and encouraging them to keep illegal guns.

“They told me, ‘If you are not going to accept that your son is having a gun, we are going to finish you here,’” he says. “I really thought it would be better if they killed me instead of continuing to hurt me. I was feeling so much pain that I thought, 'let them just kill me.’”

This was last April during one of the Ugandan army’s periodic pushes to disarm the Pokot, who live along Karamoja’s southeastern border with Kenya. Part of a decade-long campaign across Karamoja to recover illegal weapons and put an end to violent cattle raids, the operations have been mired by allegations of serious abuses.

“At that time the arrests were just rampant,” says Woyakapel’s son, Woyakapel Achola, who denies ever owning a gun. “I was not the only one arrested. The army could just come across you and you would find yourself in the detention place.”

While his father was beaten, the son says he was hung upside down from a tree from morning until evening, beaten with sticks and guns and cut with bayonets. Later, he says, his testicles were tied with a nylon thread to a nearby bush. Soldiers then beat the thread. In the end, it took two weeks, the sale of all eight of the family’s cows, and a hefty bribe of almost $600 to the soldiers to get the father and son released, they say.

Since then, the situation has improved, according to Woyakapel Achola, who is in his late 20s. The arrests have stopped and he is no longer afraid to move around the nearest town. But with the army still heavily deployed in the area he says the situation is still fragile.

“I don’t know what the government programs are. Maybe it can all happen again any time,” he says. “But people have already suffered.”

The Ugandan military has denied previous accusations of systematic abuse committed during the disarmament campaign. Now, the operations are winding down, the majority of the guns have been collected and peace is returning to the region, they say.

But the trauma and injuries—in this community, at least—are clear to see. After several hours of interviews, our translator pushes us to leave for fear that the security forces might show up.

As we head to the car, a group of local men who have gathered under a nearby tree crowd around us, lifting aside clothing to reveal scars and shoving photos of serious wounds into our hands.

A 12-year-old boy who had been shot in his left arm by soldiers as he accompanied cattle for grazing; a middle-aged man who had lost his big toe—they demand that we take their pictures and hear their tales of abuse.

“They all want to talk to you and tell you what happened to them,” our translator says. “There are so many of them.”

Transcript