MPs are set to visit the Nalufenya police station today to assess if acts of torture are committed there. They follow after Uganda Human Rights Commission that visited the facility a few days ago.

The visits are pre-arranged, the facility is expecting them. They will tour the facility and give it a clean bill of health. On account of their observation, they may be right – making an honest and dumb mistake.

They are on a wild goose chase. They know not what they are doing. They are misled and are chasing the wrong clue. Their modus operandi is flawed – seeing buildings is akin to tourists visiting a village, taking nice pictures and claiming to know the village.

Torture is not resident in a police building, and certainly not Nalufenya but in the system of policing; in the minds of its leaders and how they see their role.
If the MPs are so concerned, as we all are, by the gruesome pictures of the town mayor and want to know where he was tortured from, they may be glad to know that it was not at Nalufenya but in a van at the police headquarters on April 5, 2017 at about 1600hrs. Will they visit the van?

The question the MPs must ask if they want to get to the bottom of these things is who is ordering, financing or condoning these heinous acts?

Nicholas Opiyo is a Kampala Human Rights Lawyer