Ingrid, Tevez, Torres and Suarez all score a ‘hatrick’ this month for their respective teams

Ingrid Turinawe

Friends,
What a month we are having! Uganda Muslims at each other’s throats; Manchester City’s Striker, Tevez, came back and scored a hat trick; Liverpool’s Saurez scored hatrick yesterday and now Torres scoring hatrick as well. To top it all, we watched a YouTube video showing the Uganda police man who later turned out to be a ‘lady ‘ ‘squeezing ‘ FDC Ingrid Turinawe’s breasts for reasons I’m yet to know. I think this is where Kampalans say: ‘Kyaba too much’ meaning ‘it’s too much’, and I think the man upstairs is having fun.

I love Chelsea FC and few things give me joy like watching Chelsea obliterate a team; and I loved it when we broke Barcelona’s heart in the champions league Semi-final. The game had everything but most of all, I never believed that Chelsea had a chance when John Terry was given a red card. I almost called him a moron but then I remembered that I was brought up not to abuse anybody. Lionel Messi remains the best player in the world of football but he looked like a man stuck with a puzzle on a table after a cup of tea at the end of the game.

After Torres hatrick, I listened to Ray Wilkins on Sky sports TV and he said something like:’’… Apparently Fernando Torres has this incredible ability to want to go beyond defenders’’. Then I thought to myself, does this mean that Fernando is likely to get offside most times he gets the ball? But then again, I remembered something else:’’ several brain cells die each time one stay tuned listening to the ‘expert analyses!’. Ray Wilkins in a former Chelsea Assistant coach and he is expected to know a lot about football as we expect General Kayihura Kale to know a lot about security matters. The two have killed a lot of my brain cells this week. Following the torture that Ingrid Turinawe was subjected to, I reluctantly contacted General Kayihura to know his position. He was kind enough to respond to me and I quote:

‘’ We are taking disciplinary action against the officer who by the way is a female officer not a male officer. It is a woman, and we can and shall prove it to you. But that should not be misunderstood to be exoneration of the unlawful activities of Ms Ingrid Turinawe who provokes incidents in which sometimes some police officers make mistakes. It is amazing that not even an iota of outrage is expressed when police officers suffer excesses of rioters and their organizers and sponsors, the last one being the stoning to death of Ariong by rioters when he was carrying out his duty. I have not seen any expression of sympathy to the widow and his children the way you sympathize with Ingrid and her family for a lesser outrage. Remember the other was murder! Police also deserves balanced criticism which we rarely get……..’’

This is an interesting point of view from the General, but how about the point of view of the harassment of people by police officers? We aren’t talking about the rights of the woman here, because those are well established, except when anti-life legislation police officers would take them away. Secondly, the ‘point of view’ of the sex of the police officer concerned is hardly difficult to determine. The voice, muscles or breasts alone cannot prove anything. Even Ingrid, we know that she is a woman because she tells us so and because she is married to a ‘straight’ man, but if she wasn’t married to a man, we would not have known that she’s a woman. Right? So, I’m really wondering how General Kayihura is going to get us believe that it was a woman that sexually harassed and tortured Ingrid. Yes, it was torture as it inflicts “severe physical or mental pain or suffering” to the person. Ingrid is seen in the video with a facial expression of a lady clearly in pain but the police man/woman in question just kept ‘squeezing’ her breasts. It is implausible to believe that s/he didn’t mean to inflict as much damage as possible if given a chance, regardless of General Kayihura’s testimony in this matter. I think we need to redefine “pressure points” and when it is necessary to use them on someone driving on a street, as Ingrid was in the video.

Women have a 'breast day' protesting against police's response to Ingrid

What the Uganda police clearly demonstrated in that video was that they don’t give a damn about the community where they are doing their policing from. How could anybody allow such a horrible thing to be recorded and attributed to a community police officer, and then later come out to defend it? I can’t defend that, can you? This was someone’s wife, sister or daughter, and it could happen to any of our relatives. It is just sickly!

I don’t know why some people are saying that Ingrid’s breasts would require ‘ofwono-sized’ hands for someone to touch them properly. They are basically trying to belittle such a beautiful lady. For a 40 year plus old woman, she looks pretty good to me. Lot better than the muscular young police ‘’woman’’ whose muscular hands are seen in the video ‘squeezing’ Ingrid’s breasts. Whew!

That police man-woman should be sacked from her job, and in case she tries to apply for her next one, she should be subjected to an oral examination on her job interview. S/he should get quizzed on her nipple ‘squeezing’ abilities. Breasts are there to be sucked and pinched a little bit in romantic circumstances but not squeezed.

With due respect to my NRM friends; their views on this issue are mind-boggling! What some of them have written so far about this issue portrays the police as an organisation that follows a certain ‘torture memo’,i.e. there is a law that allows them to kill us, and also use ‘pressure points’ on our body to get us to do whatever they want. I suppose they could view it that way if they wanted to. Of course, they could view it the way I see it as well. But they would be in an extreme minority of experts if that is their view. That said, I’m happy that PM, Amama Mbabazi uncharacteristically came out to apologize for the police behavior in this incident. He beat General Kayihura to it. I think it is now justifiable to say that Ingrid has followed the rest in scoring a hatrick because a lot of people were disturbed by what happened to her.

Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba