Imagine a British police officer beating a child with a baton; hitting and kicking him on the ground whilst he sleeps. It would be a national outrage; headlines over the newspapers, commentators asking ‘why?’ ‘how did this happen? ‘is the police system failing us?’. Now imagine if that were normal. It is in Uganda. A disclaimer: this is not a reflection of the country as a whole. Uganda is a beautiful country with incredibly warm loving people, but when it comes to children living on the streets, so called ‘street kids’, there is very little empathy. Perhaps it would be different if the public saw what went on; but the beatings happen at night, under the cover of darkness.
Remember these children are not only children – they are the most vulnerable children in society. First of all they have been chased out of their homes, then they have arrived on the streets, afraid and hungry. The police should be asking them ‘what’s happened to you?’ ‘why are you here?’ with concern and empathy to encourage them to open up. Instead they are treated as criminals.
Let’s get a better understanding of what’s going on here. In what context do these beatings happen and why? Those who grow up on the streets tell of how they move around during the night to avoid police beatings; to keep out of their way they wander the streets of downtown Kampala, talking to street vendors and street workers. Sleeping before 4am may mean a rude awakening; a storm of batons, fists and feet. Told to ‘move!’ ‘get out of town!’ ‘Go home!’ and threatened with jail if they don't give up whatever money they've earnt throughout the day. Many kids sort rubbish to earn money from scraps, but it’s not a lot to a police officer. - it's just greed. The official line is that these beatings are a punishment designed to deter the children from the streets and to chase them back home. The fact that so many of these children put up with the beatings shows just how helpless and vulnerable they really are. Either they have nowhere else to go, or else these conditions are preferable to the ones they’d find at home.
Another reason for the beatings which holds an ounce of truth but is nevertheless unacceptable is that the police don’t differentiate between older street boys/street men (15+) who steal for a living and the younger children. When I walk with children living on the streets, usually between the ages of 9-14 years old, passers-by will often make comments, in the Luganda language, such as ‘they just wanna still your things..’; the children will ironically translate this for me! No child has ever stolen from me. I’m not ruling out the possibility; I’m sure some of them do steal, but I have no personal grounds for calling them thieves. Quite the opposite is true; some children will take my things to protect them from being stolen by others. Many children who arrive on the streets seem to retain some hope of getting off for a fairly long period of time. It is only as they develop and approach adulthood, and they have not yet left, that the curtain falls from their eyes as they realise that they will never be saved. It is up to them. When this happens, perhaps understandably, they turn to stealing in a desperate attempt to elevate themselves in a society which has set them as outcasts. This is not to condone it, but rather to understand it. With the ‘quick’ money they can make from selling stolen mobile phones they can begin to dress better, and thus feel better about themselves; perhaps pay a few thousand shillings per night (around 50p) to stay somewhere sheltered. We will learn more about this in a future article. In the meantime what we need to know is that some children steal, others don’t, but that they all get tarnished with the same brush. For this reason some of the wisest kids avoid hanging out with his friends, who move in large groups, because they are an easy target for the police. For example, police may need to satisfy a complainant by arresting a child in connection with a theft, and oftentimes any child will do. In other cases, so I’ve been told, police will be chasing an older boy/young man, when they pass another child who is caught unawares and arrested in his place. Ironically these younger children are not only victims of the police but also the older street boys. This topic is explored later on in the article.
Once in a while the situation for the kids gets even worse. If there’s a major political event happening for example, or the government is under pressure to appear to be doing something about the epidemic of homeless children, they will do a ‘sweep’ of the streets. All of a sudden several police lorries will descend on an area where the children hang out. The children will naturally run, and the police chase, grab, beat them, and throw as many of them as possible onto lorries. One child, after narrowly escaping this same fate in November, described how each lorry contained close to 100 children, and that there were 3 lorries. He was almost gloating as he said ‘thats not even close to one third of the number of children living here in Kampala!’. In other words, they can’t catch us all! It’s true, they can try but they can never erase all of the children living on the streets; in Kampala alone there are between 2000-3000. Where are they taking them? Kampiringisa. A name feared by all children living on the streets. The name carries so much weight. It means prison, it means one meal a day, it means being at the mercy of the police.. Kampiringisa is a prison for children. I recently found out that it is officially called a ‘correction facility’. Even parents can drop their own children here for being too ‘stubborn’. 1 See the bottom of this page for more links to articles about Kampiringisa.
I want the reader of this article to get a sense of the brutality – the sheer scale of the human rights violations - going on here in Uganda. Don’t get me wrong, the beauty of being around these children day in day out far outways the dark side, nevertheless the dark side has to be brought into the light; that is the point of Kitangala. There are a number of drop-in centres scattered about Kampala to support the daily needs of children living on the streets – they typically provide a meal, a place to wash clothes and bathe if they’re lucky, some education, Bible study and first aid. The children, like any children, are always covered in cuts and bruises, but unlike a child who is able to wash regularly, many of these children have wounds which fester and become infected. A simple cut to the foot or the leg, on a child who walks around all day barefoot, sometimes wading in streams/sewage outlets to collect plastic bottles, can become a serious wound. Clean water costs money, which a child on the streets would rather drink than use to wash a wound. Education is needed here to enlighten the children about the cause of infection and the need for cleanliness, but even with this knowledge they may still struggle to keep clean when they have no choice but to bathe in the poluted water running through downtown Kampala. A common cause for injury is football, but the most common cause I hear of is the police. Either a child has been running from the police and in their terror have fallen at great speed, or else they have been caught and beaten by police directly. The wounds are often quite deep and need to be regularly disinfected and covered where possible.
This brings me back to the issue of theft which we explored earlier. Whilst bathing in the stream/sewage children will leave their clothes and, if they own them, shoes on the side of the bank. Another child Ruben* described to me how the police will actually come along and intentionally throw their clothes into the dirty water, just to laugh at them and belittle them. Meanwhile the older children/men will come along and steal their shoes. It really is a jungle for these younger kids, and they need our protection so that they don’t go on and repeat the cycle of bullying and torment.
So what is the solution to all of this violence? At first I was so angry - at the police, government and anyone who ignorantly referred to the children as ‘stubborn’, implying that it was their own fault they were living on the streets. However I realised that the only way to move forward, is to work with the system. That means talking with people in government, sensitising police and the public; working patiently with people who do not understand the situation, but who have an influence over it. The solution therefore is not violence and anger, but negotiation and sensitisation. Over time we need to be able to develop a conversation within Uganda, to education the population about what’s going on and to develop a sense of responsibility for all children. Many already do, but are limited in their capasity to help. However it is particularly within the cities, where there is an increasing lack of accountability, that human beings are sidelined - as they are in any city around the world. No one person can save all children from the streets, but if a whole nation wakes up there is no need for any child to remain alone. Anyone can help a child on the streets, even if they think they have nothing to give, they can give the gift of humanity – of treating a child as a fellow human being. A smile here, an encouragement there. Those who can give more can provide food, shelter, assistance in returning the children back home or in fostering them in cases where this is not possible. Together we can lift up every child living on the street.
*All names have been changed to protect the identities of the children.
References
More articles about Kampiringisa
https://www.africaexpedition.de/reiseberichte/intern/kampiringisa-english/
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