As I write this my heart bleeds for the loss of yet another innocent boy Kham Kakama at the hands of heartless men. My heart goes out to his parents, for as a parent, I know what an agonizing experience they are going through at the moment.

But Kakama's death is yet another challenge to the police, the judiciary and parliament to rein in on child killers.

Kakama’s demise comes at a time when Ugandans are still trying to come to terms with the sacrificial murder of Joseph Kasirye, whose alleged killer- Kato Kajubi- has his neck intact, after court let him off the hook.

Newspapers are always awash with stories of child abuse practices that ends up disabling the children or taking them to their premature graves.
All said and done, Kakama poses another serious challenge to the police, judiciary and parliament. Why I say so?

Police
We are all waiting to see if police will not mess up the evidence, like they did in Kajubi's case, affording the criminals an acquittal. We are waiting intently to see if police will not leave out some material exhibits, helping defence lawyers to exploit those missing links to get their evil clients an acquittal. In a word, police must weave a water tight case so as not to leave evil Tumusiime and Ssajjabi an escape route.

Judiciary
All eyes are on the judiciary if they will live to the legal adage, "Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done". We don't expect the judiciary to use procedural and technical excuses, to let savages that are Tumusiime and Ssajjabi off the hook.

Good enough, at least one, Tumusiime has confessed to killing Kakama. And he must have implicated Ssajjabi, his argument that he was a mere pawn in the chess game not withstanding. We don't expect the judiciary to throw out Tumusiime's confession as having been forced on him. For why didn't the same police force his comrade-in-crime, Ssajjabi, also to confess to the crime?

This is exactly what happened in the Kajubi murder case where confessed murderes like Kateregga were let off the hook by becomig  state witnesses.

Parliament
This one holds the key. Understandably they have accused the judiciary of giving child killers light sentences. And they have too, called for firing squads for child abusers.
But they are too to blame.

They have the duty to amend laws as to do away with obsolete ones, but they have always stopped at rhetoric other than taking action to set out a strong warning to potential criminals that they will have a tough day in court.

Let Kakama not die in vain. Let him die with the vice of child killing. Sweet Kakama will only rest in peace, if his killers were hanged. And their trial and execution must be swift enough.

By David Lukoma blog comments powered by Disqus

< Prev		Next >