JUSTICE TRENDS JUSTICE TRENDS Nr. 1 | June 2017 | Page 177

HUMAN RIGHTS / DERECHOS HUMANOS
JT: You became worldwide known: it is your name that stands
out from the list of the entire death row of Uganda’s prisons.
How do you feel about that and how do you see the fact that
you are the face of such evolution in the jurisprudence of your
country?
SK: The most important thing that I feel happy about is that,
through the case, so many people’s lives were changed, and, honestly,
I don’t take pleasure in the fact that I’m widely known and so
popular. I take pleasure in the fact that even when I’m out of prison
I am still actively involved in the advocacy for the abolition of the
death penalty in Uganda, Africa, and the entire world. This is what
gives me pride and this is what I’m looking for to see in the future.
La desesperanza me paralizaba y en todas partes me parecía que
no había salida, que no había esperanza. Pensé en cómo moriría... A
veces, contenía mi aliento para imaginar cómo mi vida sería exprimida
fuera de mí. Y cada vez que capturaba esos momentos me sentía tan
asustada. Es una sensación horrible e indescriptible, como se puede
imaginar. Te dicen que vas a morir cuando no estás enferma... ¡Fue
horrible!
JT: Usted se hizo conocida mundialmente: es su nombre el que
destaca de la lista de todo el corredor de la muerte de las prisiones
de Uganda.
¿Cómo se siente usted sobre eso y cómo ve el hecho de que es
el rostro de tal evolución en la jurisprudencia de su país?
SK: Lo más importante, que me hace sentir feliz, es que, a través del
caso, la vida de tantas personas ha cambiado y, honestamente, no me
complace el hecho de que soy ampliamente conocida y tan popular. Me
complace el hecho de que, incluso ahora que estoy fuera de la cárcel,
todavía estoy activamente involucrada en la defensa de la abolición
de la pena de muerte en Uganda, África y el mundo entero. Esto es
lo que me da orgullo y eso es lo que estoy buscando ver en el futuro.
JT: Usted ha hecho sus estudios de licenciatura en Derecho con
una universidad extranjera mientras estaba encarcelada.
Susan Kigula’s graduation ceremony / Ceremonia de graduación de Susan Kigula
JT: You have done your undergraduate studies in Law with a
foreign university while you were imprisoned.
Why have you decided to study Law and what were the
circumstances that enabled you to pursue this goal?
SK: It was not on my agenda, at the beginning, to be honest,
because first of all I was a victim of the Law... I really hated Law
in the beginning. I was like: “No, this is not something I want to
do, because I can’t go anywhere, I can’t ever get justice”. But it
was Alexander McLean, the Director General of African Prisons
Project – a UK charity organization that operates in Uganda and
in Kenya prisons – who came up with that the idea because after
studying high school we didn’t have a university, so I was stuck.
He came and told me: “Susan, you know you can make a difference
in life”. And I was like: “No, why me?” He asked me why I wouldn’t
take Law. He told me, he believed I could do better... I had known
him for so many years, since when he was coming to prison [as
a volunteer] before he even started African Prisons Project... He
then introduced me to the Legal Studies and sponsored me to study
Law at the University of London.
So, he kept on encouraging me, because he’s also a lawyer himself,
and when I started studying, I realized that I could actually do
something, and then my eyes were opened. And because of the
injustices and of the miscarriages of Justice that I was seeing and
that were taking place in prison, I