I am leaving home smartly dressed and wearing my beautiful smile until I get to Brigadier Mugabe Freeman’s torture chamber where right at the gate I will be stripped of my watch, necklace, earrings, phones, bag and most annoyingly my private parts will be turned upside down in search of any devices I might use to harm Freeman, the mighty chairman of the Court martial. At the previous appearance, amidst protests, I was allowed to enter with aka tinny toilet bag that contained my sanitary towels, I had to first show all those at the checkpoint the pads, still they had to be given instructions😳😳

When you are lucky and you succeed to get passed the gate, you are made to wait for over 3 hours outside the court entrance until the Chairman gives instructions that you be allowed to access the court. At the court entrance, you have to first beg, quarrel or even sing for the heavily armed masked soldiers for you to enter the court room, sometimes you may succeed, sometimes you may fail and even get arrested and beaten for disturbing the peace of the soldiers who oftentimes insist they are simply working on instructions from the Chairman.

Just outside the courtroom, there is a corridor and a small room where your private parts are once again turned upside down to ensure the Chairman is safe.

Sometimes the legal team finds the tribunal session already ongoing, a lot of their time was wasted by the masked soldiers who insist that they have instructions from the Chairman that only 5 lawyers should be allowed to represent Dr @kizzabesigye1 and  Hajji Obeid. All through the submissions, Rafael (the judge ‘advocate’) keeps threatening how his word is final and demands professionalism from the legal team because they risk being punished for misconduct😭

The pushing and pulling continues, when the chairman is asked to comment about Rafael’s misconduct, he ignores and adjourns the sitting to another day!

All this while, our cars are not allowed to park in the huge ‘court martial’ parking, the activists who were denied access to court are being harassed and arrested for donning the “Free Kizza Besigye” tshirts. 

You come to Freeman’s court when you are aged 36 and leave when you are 40 years! You come to freeman’s court when you’re weighing 70Kg and leave when you are 60Kg. Before Freeman, we are all prisoners with no rights.