KTN Business News anchor, Joy Doreen Biira, has finally disclosed the dreadful experience she went through in Uganda while under police custody.
In a TV interview, Ms Doreen stated that the dark moments under arrest were defined by threats, physical harassment and abusive remarks.
“That was the first time I was being roughed up and taken to a police station.” she said.
She noted that the police particularly picked on her when she revealed that she was a journalist.
“I became a point of interest just because I said I was a journalist,” Doreen inferred.
The reporter, who was arrested for allegedly circulating photos and videos of a military fight that broke out in Uganda's Kasese town, was the only female apprehended during the raid in her uncle's home.
She painted a picture of the police cell stating: “The cell was pretty horrible because I had never been to a place like that. It was a very tiny room with a ventilation just the size of my hand. Maybe a window that could not open, so it was so stuffy in there. I could smell it from the entrance.”
Doreen highlighted that when she was locked in the smelly cell, she stood for three hours in silence with a gazillion thoughts defined by hopelessness running through her mind.
“I stood there for about three hours and I did not know what to do. I was like now who exactly knows that we have been arrested besides by uncle and auntie. And do they even know who they need to call?” She questioned.
Ms Doreen divulged that her worst moment was when the Ugandan police took her back to her uncle's house to search for a camera which allegedly recorded the horrible massacre.
“The point which we went back to my uncle's place was the most traumatising part of this whole thing,” she pointed out.
The KTN journalist narrated that upon arrival police ransacked the house and a found the alleged camera but it did not have the memory cards.
This got her into trouble as they threatened to kill her if she did not produce the storage devices.
“There is one who said if you do not tell us we could actually just finish you off. The faster you talk the faster this gets done. One of them actually hit me with a gun and I fell to the ground,” the reporter added.
She noted that at that moment an officer unzipped her top and searched through her bra for the memory card to no avail.
“One of the officers said take her and check her, check her private parts we need to find those memory cards,” she remembered.
The anchor added that at some point the officer indicated that she could be a prostitute pretending to be a journalist.
Doreen was arrested alongside her fiance last year in Kasese Town, Uganda where she had travelled for her traditional wedding ceremony.
According to police spokesperson Felix Kaweesi, the reporter was arrested for going against orders that had been issued when the military fight broke out in the area.
"I think she misbehaved, she might have accessed a cordoned off area," Kaweesi said.
However, she was released and hit with the charge of abetting terrorism through the content she posted on social media.
Her case is still ongoing.
Here is the video courtesy of KTN:
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