Lack of EAC spirit slows criminal crackdown

PARTNER states of the East African Community (EAC) are concentrating more on national matters, giving less attention to fighting cross-border crime. This was said yesterday by the Inspector General of the Ugandan Police, Lt Gen Kale Kayihura, in a meeting that brought together police chiefs from all EAC partner states.According to Kayihura, a challenge remained in fighting cross-border crime, calling for a change in mindset of regional forces to curb these crimes.“Our mindset should drift from national interests to the EAC context and this will enable us mount collective crackdown on the persisting cross border crimes,” Kayihura stressed.“Once we think along these lines, such crimes like fugitives and terrorists loitering around will be definitely curtailed,” he added.Kayihura said that differences in legal setups of member states are also another impediment, and called for the harmonisation of legislations, especially those punishing cross-border crimes.A typical example in the legal differences, as cited by Chief Supt Elisa Kabera, the Director for international cooperation at Rwanda National Police, was the issue of illicit brew locally known as Kanyanga.Kanyanga is outlawed in Rwanda but freely consumed in other member states like Uganda, and this has led to its continued proliferation into the country.“Drug abuse is not really taken as a serious issue in some member countries, but we hope all these differences will be discussed in an effort to harmonise systems between member states,” said Kabera.According to statistics from Rwanda police, there were 2,770 cases of drug trafficking registered only in seven months, most of them smuggled in from the neighbouring countries.