The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Musician Pius Mayanja, also known as Pallaso, is accusing the police of assaulting him during an operation conducted at his home in Makindye on Wednesday.
The musician who is currently admitted at the Entebbe-based Albert Cook Hospital was initially accused of escaping with police handcuffs, escaping from lawful custody, obstruction, inciting violence and doing a negligent act likely to spread an infection.
The charges stem from a disturbance call from residents of Luwafu zone, that a group of unruly people had gathered at Pallaso’s home at midnight drinking alcohol. According to Kampala Metropolitan Deputy Police Spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire, the group comprising more than 30 people was playing loud music and drinking in total disregard of the presidential guidelines on the control of coronavirus disease.
He added that the group became violent when police officers reached out to the singer to control the loud music and disperse the gathering. It’s on this basis that they opted to arrest one Henry Kasozi and Pallaso before his escape.
However, Pallaso told Uganda Radio Network in a telephone interview that he did not believe he committed any crime because he was found at his home with family members and a few of his employees. He says he only escaped from the severe beating subjected to him by the police personnel and all he wanted was to save his life.
Pallaso adds that the operation at his home was illegal since President Yoweri Museveni had already stopped security teams from raiding people’s homes in the enforcement of COVID-19 guidelines.
Pallaso however says that the police handcuffs were picked from him by a person unknown to him.
But Owoyesigyire says that the said injuries came in the process of trying to remove the handcuffs forcibly and disputed allegations that the singer was beaten to a pulp. Owoyesigyire says that the singer will still be arrested, on the same charges, as soon as he recovers.
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One of the ways in which security agencies in Uganda can tackle crime and lawlessness is to make prisons and other detention centres extremely unpalatable to the detainees. At the moment, Ugandan criminals don’t fear being detained or being sent to jail because these places are by far more comfortable than the places of abode of these criminals. They would be there enjoying free food, rent- free accommodation, resting, and gaining some political capital as human rights fundraisers champion and create their plight in the eyes of the international community. But if these holding facilities were places of hard labour, bone breaking, and kibooko, no one would dare provoke an arrest.