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Police stripped, hit me with a gun and called me a prostitute – KTN anchor


KTN business news anchor Joy Doreen Biira has narrated her heartrending humiliation at the hands of Ugandan police after she was arrested over terrorism related charges.

Doreen was seized by police last week and locked up for allegedly circulating photos and videos of a military fight that broke out in Uganda’s Kasese town.

She was arrested alongside her fiance where she had travelled for her traditional wedding ceremony. She was released after being charged with abetting terrorism through the content she posted on social media.

Speaking during a TV interview on KTN, Ms Biira emotionally narrated the dark moments which were defined by threats, physical harassment and abusive remarks.

She said the police were brutal with her as they took her back to her uncle’s house to look for the camera and memory cards that she had used to record the clashes in Kasese.

‘FINISH YOU OFF’

“There is one who said ‘if you do not tell us where the cards are 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 journalist said.

She narrated how an officer unzipped her blouse 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.

This was her first ever arrest and she believes she was targetted after she revealed to the police that she is a journalist.

“I became a point of interest just because I said I was a journalist,” she said.

PROSTUTUTE

At some point one officer indicated that she could be a prostitute pretending to be a journalist.

After arrest, she was locked in a smelly cell where she stood hopeless for three hours in silence.

“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 wondered.

“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.”

 

Her case is still ongoing.