"I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, where two men lay. I couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. They had been beaten so much their faces were unrecognizable," recalls Moses Ssentamu.

" 'Tell the truth,' the men threatened, 'or you'll end up like them.' I was taken to that 'safe house,' as such places are called in Uganda, in July 2003 and kept there for a month. They beat me with a gun butt on the back of my neck," says the 38-year-old Ugandan, showing the scar.

Three years later, the father of four fled his homeland. Now in Nagoya, Ssentamu this month marks seven years since he swapped a life of fear in Uganda for one of hardship as a refugee in Japan.