An Assault on Parliament Ave.

Since it's my last week in Kampala my friend/co-intern, Carolyn, and I have decided to go out for lunch everyday. Today while we were walking down Parliament Ave. a pickup truck stopped beside us and some men and a woman jumped out. Suddenly, they surrounded a woman selling mangoes from a bowl on her head on the side of the road. They took the knife she was carrying in the bowl to peel the mangoes and held it against her neck and she started whimpering. They then took the bowl from her head, and grabbed her by her hands and feet and threw her into the back of a pickup truck with a KCCA (Kampala City Council) label on the back. At this point the woman was wailing. There was another woman sitting in the back of the truck who looked equally as terrified.

Initially I thought she was being robbed, then worried that she was going to be raped. It wasn't until someone standing with us pointed out that it was a city council truck that I got a sense that it was a human right violation.

Parliament Ave. is a very busy street lined with government ministries and the front entrance to the Ugandan Parliament. While some people stopped to take notice with us, many others continued to continue with their business, not paying much attention to the violence unfolding in front of them.   

Before we arrived in October, a law had been pass making street vendors illegal. At the time many shops were closed by force but the presence of fruit and airtime vendors has persisted throughout my stay here. It is quite possible that this woman was threatened and assaulted because of her "illegal activity". Yet, the people who accosted her were not wearing uniforms and did not speak to the woman before they attacked her. 

There were also two other mango vendors standing further down the street that these individuals ignored. If nothing else this was a blatant violation of human rights in the interest of city beautification

It's very hard to know what to do in these types of situations. There is no one to report it to and no way to intervene. What's worse is that very few people seemed to notice and even fewer seemed to care.