The Uganda government’s policy of militarising the police is creating controversy as it emerges that officers of the Rapid Response Unit are now runaway abusers of human rights.  

The Rapid Response Unit is a specialised police division created from the army to investigate and respond to sophisticated urban crime, but years after it was grafted on to the regular police force, the unit maintains a military character.

Hence its operations have been the subject of concern to human rights groups.  

A Human Rights Watch report released last week, said the Police Unit employs unorthodox means and frequently operates outside the law, carrying out torture, extortion, and in some cases, extrajudicial killings in detention centres.  

The 59-page report, titled “Violence Instead of Vigilance: Torture and Illegal Detention by Uganda’s Rapid Response Unit” documents at least six extrajudicial killings in 2010.   

Ugandan authorities should open an independent investigation into the unit’s conduct and activities, and hold accountable anyone responsible for human rights violations, the international human rights watchdog said.

The Rapid Response Unit was formed in 2002 by President Yoweri Museveni as Operation Wembley — an ad hoc security entity to fight violent urban crime — under the command of Brig Elly Kayanja (then Colonel), then an active member of the Ugandan army.  

The unit was made up of both reserve and serving army officers, operating with an extrajudicial “shoot to kill” mandate because, according to Museveni, “the corrupt judiciary and police” had failed to defeat crime.  

Before Operation Wembley, the police already had General Katumba Wamala as Inspector General of Police from 2001.

Thus, the militarisation of law and order had started in earnest. 

Wembley, which had over 60 army operatives, later evolved into the Violent Crime Crack Unit, but continued to attract criticism for human rights abuses especially torture, from several rights agencies including the government’s own Uganda Human Rights Commission.

VCCU was formally taken under police command in 2007, when it was renamed the Rapid Response Unit.  

Police chief Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura denies that the unit has any military personnel in its ranks at present.

According to Gen Kayihura, all officers who were absorbed from Wembley and VCCU have since undergone police training to become “a miniature FBI-like force” within the Ugandan police.

While conceding that RRU has killed some suspects in the course of duty, the police chief, however, denies that suspects have been killed in the unit’s custody. 

“I am not aware. Apart from those killed in the course of duty when armed robbers attack people, I am not aware of anyone who have been killed in police custody,” he said.  

But in its 2009 annual report, the government’s own watchdog documented a combined 55 cases of illegal detention, torture and murder of suspects under RRU’s custody.

In fact, the UHRC says complaints against the unit had more than doubled from the previous year.