“My name is Kawesi Joseph an lgbti activist and I work with come out posttest club (COPTEC) as executive director and this organization was formed to help grass root lgbti members affected by HIV/AIDS. Am also infected with HIV/AIDS as a result of rape.

On the 30th of December 2012,  police men led by Mohammad Kirumira the OC for Kawempe police station by then stormed by rental room and arrested me saying that there is a couple of gay organizations that am heading in Bwaise. They started torturing me with through beatings using a gun. I asked Kirumira why he was arresting me and he told me that I have gay promoting organizations in Bwaise, they handcuffed me. They took me through the whole area of my residence while onlookers started spitting at me that they were tired of such immoral people like us in their area with many of them spitting and cursing at me. After a distance as they were heading me to police when we had reached kimombasa zone in a dark corner, with permission from the OC, he directed a group of men to insert a police baton/stick smeared with oil into my anus, they did so and this left me with bleeding and severe pain. From there I was taken and dropped in a police cell where I spent two weeks. More so OC Kirumira came to my area of residence and tried to bribe my male friends to come and pin me for recruiting them into homosexuality but they refused to do so since they were my good friends. After two weeks Frank Mugisha and supportive lawyers for the Ugandan lgbti society bailed me out of police and took me straight to Mulago national hospital for treatment where I spent four months in deep anal pain and bleeding though I was undergoing treatment. Later I was discharged and went home and a friend of mine continued taking care of me to heal well. My house was filled with a strange stench due to the anal damage but I later healed well.

Since then I usually get strange nightmares whenever I remember what happened to me and I sometimes develop feelings of committing suicide because of this deep pain for whatever I went through.”

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