{UAH} “I already have some bedbugs in the van,” the policeman told him.

Inside the belly of the beast: What goes on in Besigye van

Because this van has since been used to whisk Dr Besigye to police cells on the various occasions he has been arrested in recent months, the van was christened "the Besigye van". PHOTO BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA  

In April 2011 as Dr Kizza Besigye led the walk-to-work protests, he was savagely attacked by policemen led by Mr Gilbert Arinaitwe, beaten, pepper-sprayed and left unconscious. To cap the incident, the Opposition leader was pushed under the seats of a run-down police pick-up vehicle and driven to Kasangati police station.

Some other people, especially protesters, were over the years arrested and bundled on to police pick-ups in a way that left human rights defenders angry and bashing the government.
So a solution came in.

And it came in the form of a black van. Because this van has since been used to whisk Dr Besigye to police cells on the various occasions he has been arrested in recent months, the van was christened "the Besigye van".

The van, especially since the February 18 election, has become "notorious" in the eyes of many. There have been claims that in the van are men who torture those who are arrested and put in there.

On February 26, Dr Besigye lent more credence to the claims when, in a Facebook post, he said: "I feel like becoming a real terrorist". His feeling, he said, was "the effect of endless acts of impunity on the part of the Uganda police."

In pain
Dr Besigye said when he was arrested at the gate of his home on February 25, he met in the van two men who had been beaten and were in pain.
"One of the men held in the van, named Jamilu Budde (whom I know) was crying with pain and holding his left arm in a manner that suggested he could have had a broken collar bone," Dr Besigye wrote.

He added: "I pleaded with the "commander" of the van, one Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Kidandi to let me help Budde with first aid and get him taken to the clinic, but this was denied. Instead, the two men were roughly thrown off the van and I was carried away alone."

The men, from Kakiri in Wakiso District, were among a group of Dr Besigye's supporters who had gone to visit him as he remained under house arrest. When they were pulled out of the taxi that had brought them and put in the van, the driver of the taxi just drove off, leaving the duo in the hands of the police.

The two were later taken into police custody and held for days until they were released on court bail, having been charged with inciting violence. Attempts to speak with them for this article were futile. They agreed to two separate appointments but they did not show up.
As stories about what happens in the dreaded "Besigye van" made the rounds, Dr Besigye, on March 2, posted a video on his Facebook page sharing his experience in the van. We will reproduce the narration verbatim.

"To be taken to the van, they still must grab me, and lift me, and shove me, and push, and, you know, throw me into the van. Why they have to do that I have never understood.

"Then from there they drive the van like, you know, they have been possessed by demons (laughter). Yesterday we were driving at 140km every hour on a murram road between Kasangati and Kira. You know, (we were) jumping in the air, like the safari vehicles and coming down.

"And these characters, the driver and an Assistant Superintendent of Police, a man called Kidandi who was seating in the passenger seat in the van, both him and the driver had no safety belts on even when they are provided in the vehicle. It is a new van actually with nice safety belts.

None of them was putting on a safety belt with the vehicle jumping, dodging trucks of sand. Now, I expected that we were going to bang and roll anytime. And that is what it normally is."

Enter journalists
As the police operation against Dr Besigye intensified, even journalists, who had made it a routine to camp every morning near the police barricade erected in Dr Besigye's driveway to prevent him from getting out of his home, were rounded up.

The most publicised case of journalists' encounters with the police is of Ms Remmy Bahati, a reporter with the television station NBS. Ms Bahati, who had gone to Dr Besigye's home with top leaders of FDC who had a meeting with Dr Besigye, got into a quarrel with the police as they tried to block her from doing her job.

Policemen and women chased her down until she was caught and put in the van. Inside the van, she claimed in an interview with the international broadcaster BBC, she was manhandled by the occupants.

I was there when the practice of the police rounding up journalists as they covered the siege on Dr Besigye's home started. It was Saturday, February 27. In the mid-morning, we had taken position about 50 metres from the police barricade, waiting for developments. We were more than 10 reporters and photojournalists.

Mr James Kawalya, the District Police Commander Kasangati, walked over to us and said for that day, we would not be allowed to operate from there. Some of our colleagues, after a futile haggle with him, walked away.

The alternative he offered was that we would withdraw to Kasangati Town, about a mile away, and wait from there. From the town, of course, we would not be able to capture any of the drama that we thought would happen on the day.
Former prime minister Amama Mbabazi, also an aggrieved presidential candidate like Dr Besigye, was expected to visit with Dr Besigye, in the company of lawyers and all the key Opposition politicians. Already, FDC president Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu and Mr Wasswa Biriggwa, the party chairman, had been blocked from accessing Dr Besigye's home. We were not going to leave the spot unless the police forced us away or arrested us. Journalists do not leave such spots.
We calmly, but firmly, rejected Mr Kawalya's order to leave the area. We told him that just like him, we too had been assigned to work from there, and that it was important that we were there to report whatever was going on. He did not respond to our challenge to cite a law that barred us from covering police activities in situations like that. He just said that was an order.

When we refused to leave, Mr Kawalya retreated to the police barricade and sent a female traffic police officer to order us to drive away. We still did not move.

In the meantime, the "Besigye van" had packed just behind us. One of its occupants, a well-built man with a sure gait, approached to tell us that "things are bad" and we should leave. We still stayed put.

Twelve policemen then moved on us. They first grabbed those who had cameras and were capturing the moments, dragging them to the van with their toes hardly touching the ground. During the fracas, NTV's cameraman, Mr Abubaker Zirabamuzale, dropped a piece from his camera.
I retreated to our vehicle, locked myself inside and tried to take some pictures of what was happening. One of the policemen spotted me and quickly banged on the car windscreen with his baton, ordering me to open the door.

I stopped taking pictures but I did not open for him. Our car was now surrounded by policemen. The driver finally yielded and opened the door. We were dragged out, held by our trousers, and taken to the van.

Blow in the back
One of the men in the van ordered my colleague, Mr Abubaker Lubowa, to take a particular seat.

Mr Lubowa ignored the order, arguing that since he had been arrested and stopped from doing his job and he was now in the van, he would take any seat he wanted.

He took the seat next to what he was ordered to take, and this earned him a punch in the back. He yelled as it landed.

And there I was in the van with four other colleagues. The others were Mr Lubowa, Mr Zirabamuzale, NTV's Suhail Mugabi and another photojournalist I was meeting for the first time and who did not give me his name.

A man dressed in Uganda police khaki pants took charge of the van. I sat right next to him near the door and I got chance to ask him some questions. Having identified myself, I asked for his name. He ignored me. I told him that since I was in his custody, it would be a good thing for me to know him, the reason policemen have nametags these days. He shrugged me off.

Having settled in the van, we turned on the plain-clothed man who had hit Mr Lubowa as we were forced into the van. We asked him to identify himself and explain his action. He did not utter a word.

He was one of the two well-built men in the back of the van, in addition to the policeman who manned the door, and the driver.

The policeman had a pistol strung around his right thigh. The pepper spray that people have come to associate with the van was nowhere in sight. But there were biscuits wrapped in green packs, which the occupants of the van graciously passed on to us. I declined the offer.

The policeman commanding the van received a telephone call, with someone probably asking him to pick up some other people who had been arrested. "I already have some bedbugs in the van," the policeman told him.

"Who are the bedbugs?" I asked him shortly after he got off the telephone. He did not respond.
The air conditioning in the van was running with all the tinted windscreens drawn as the commander of the van waited for instructions. He was soon ordered to drive us to Kasangati Police Station, hardly a kilometre away.

At the police station we met with Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi, who was commanding the operation.

He told us we were not under arrest, but that we were just not allowed to operate from close to Dr Besigye's home on the day.

He did not offer more explanations. He said we were free to leave but would not be allowed to go back to the spot from where we had been arrested.

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Rehema
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