Update
On Monday 19 May 2025, Agather Atuhaire, who features in the below report on legal action against the autocratic Museveni regime in Uganda, was abducted, held incommunicado for four days, and tortured, by the neighbouring, also dictatorial, regime in Tanzania. Held and tortured together with her was Kenyan good governance activist Boniface Mwangi. The two were part of a group of activists and lawyers that had come to Tanzania to observe the political trial against that country’s opposition leader, Tundu Lissu. Repression in all three East African countries, -Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda-, has been increasing in recent years, with many political prisoners being held in Uganda, scores of youth killed in protests in Kenya and an increasing wave of abductions, disappearances and torture in Tanzania. ZAM has called for action from the international community to support democratic forces and their pro-good-governance protests and actions, including ‘lawfare’ -as described in the report below- in the East African region. ZAM has particularly called on the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to stop its ‘capacity building’ of the Tanzanian immigration service, which handed Atuhaire and Mwangi over to a torture squad.
Read the ZAM press release here.
Radical rudeness and other outrage
“But of course we’ll put your wife on social media,” shouts Agather Atuhaire, lawyer, journalist and activist, at the policeman she has just recognised as a torturer of dozens of ‘Generation Z’ protesters. Meeting the officer at the occasion of another protest march, the man, who has recognised her too, is complaining to her about circulating not only his photo but also one of his spouse. But Atuhaire is not apologetic. “We’ll put every one of you and yours on social media because you leave no other avenue open to us,” she adds.
It is no empty warning. Atuhaire’s Agora group of social media activists holds online debates on issues of bad governance, corruption, and oppression that attract the participation of tens of thousands of citizens.
Rudeness as a strategy
To circulate photos of torturers and ‘dox’ even their families may be unorthodox—and in the case of relatives, generally wrong—but in Uganda, under the increasingly militarised and oppressive regime of autocrat Yoweri Museveni, more and more normally unacceptable tools are being added to the array of the resistance. Even a strategy of ‘radical rudeness’, dating back to the days of the colony, is being deployed to irk those in power—and the judges who are their pals: “this man has both a small penis and a small brain,” a lawyer recently volleyed at a judge who had slapped a defamation fine on a fellow lawyer for calling two other (High Court) judges ‘incompetent’ on social media.
The lawyer said the judge had a small penis and a small brain
The ‘rude’ Generation Z
Like their counterparts in Kenya and Nigeria, Uganda’s young protesters are part of social movements emerging across Africa that merge legal and other tactics emanating from the West with oral traditional methods from indigenous social movements. The legacy of anticolonial resisters like Semakula Mulumba—an activist in Buganda who authored a scathing eighteen-page letter and declined the Bishop of Uganda’s 1948 invitation to dinner in protest against invaders he viewed as a corrupting influence—inspires these Generation Z movements. They believe that the current political elite, with its first-class hospitals, huge salaries, and perks at the expense of the populace, has taken the place of colonialists.
Nowadays’ radically rude methods used by the ‘legal rebels’ “are merely one facet of a groundswell of disgust felt by a generation of Ugandans who have known only one leader in their lifetime, and that leader has not treated them very well,” says law professor Joe Oloka-Onyango in his recent article on reforming the rule of law in Uganda. In the same article, he adds that “one dismisses such activism with caution; it raises awareness, it organises support, and it holds those in positions of power accountable. Most importantly, it resonates with the seemingly unstoppable wave of Gen-Z protests across the continent.”
Professor Christopher Mbaziira, head of the Network for Public Interest Litigation (NETPIL), observes that “Given that civic space remains constricted, the chanting of songs and unruly tactics offer a platform for civic engagement.” Human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo concurs: “Every effort counts, and every single voice will matter in this process—even when a court makes a decision that is patently unlawful.”
Contempt of court
The “unruly tactics,” as they are called, are many. On January 7, 2025, opposition lawyer Eron Kiiza simply let go of his anger, shouting and gesticulating in the military court where his political prisoner clients were confined in an iron cage. Kiiza had also physically shoved aside the military court orderly who had instructed him where to walk and sit, loudly declaring: “I will enter here. I am tired of this.” As the crowd erupted in a crescendo of approval, soldiers placed Kiiza in a chokehold, arrested him, and threw him into the dock beside his clients, whom he embraced. The audience began singing “We Shall Overcome,” the same song that would echo again when protests led to Kiiza’s release on bail after he had served three gruelling months of a nine-month prison sentence for contempt of court.
The military court evokes bitter memories
Uganda’s past reign of terror under Idi Amin is tangible in the military court itself. The scene of Eron Kiiza’s outrage, located right next to the Makindye military barracks, evokes bitter memories of the blood spilt by hundreds of prisoners, beaten to death in its dungeons during Amin’s eight-year reign in the 1970s.
Once were comrades
Remarkably, the political prisoner currently defended by Eron Kiiza in this court once fought Uganda’s past dictatorships side by side with the man who, in 1986, would become—and remain—Uganda’s president. This comrade in arms and erstwhile presidential physician is Kizza Besigye, now Uganda’s main opposition leader and Museveni’s principal foe. The fact that Besigye, in contrast to the increasingly autocratic president and his ruling party, the NRM, has continued to uphold ideals of democracy and social justice in Uganda has increasingly unsettled his former comrade. Over the years, Besigye has frequently been jailed, placed under house arrest, accused of both treason and rape, tear-gassed, beaten, and hospitalised. Now charged with treason and conspiracy to topple the government, he has been imprisoned once more since 20 November last year.
Ugandan spies had abducted the duo
With the case being sub judice, it isn’t known what evidence the state hopes to rely on to convict Besigye and two others who, it says, ‘co-conspired’ with the elderly doctor. What is clear, however, is that the case largely rests on a meeting Besigye and his associate, now co-accused Obeid Lutale, had in Nairobi, in neighbouring Kenya, presumably with fellow democratic activists. Ugandan secret service operatives had monitored their visit, barged into the meeting room in an apartment block in the city, arrested them, and carried them, blindfolded, by car back to Kampala.
Besigye, his co-accused Lutale, and later also another so-called co-conspirator, army captain Denis Oola, are now specifically accused of soliciting military, financial, and other logistical support to assassinate President Museveni and topple his government.
Deep fake
The offence of treason carries the death penalty as the maximum sentence. However, part of the material that claims to underpin charges of ‘armed insurrection’ against Besigye and the co-accused is a clip that has circulated on social media in which Besigye appears to be discussing arms sales. Expert analysts have dismissed the claim as a deepfake.
Flimsy charges have included wearing a red beret
Besides Besigye and his co-accused, many political opponents of the Museveni regime have been convicted on fake or flimsy charges, including wearing the opposition’s hallmark red beret. “The whole abuse starts with the arrest (and is there during the) prosecutorial investigations,” says vocal human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo. “All these institutions have been weaponised by the regime as a tool for political repression. By the time (a case) gets to the court system, judicial officers are gripped with fear. They have seen administrative actions taken against their colleagues.” His colleague George Musisi, also a human rights lawyer, agrees: “Judicial officers now have to do the executive’s bidding for self-preservation and to gain promotion,” he says.
“Non-political”
As root causes of the current subservient state of the judiciary, Musisi explains that the “courts of law have been caught in a political crisis ever since Constitutional Amendments in 2006 and 2017 lifted the term and age limits (for the president) and created a de facto life presidency.” According to law professor and head of the Network for Public Interest Litigation (NETPIL), Christopher Mbaziira, the introduction of the “political question doctrine” into Uganda’s post-independence jurisprudence in 1966 has also been exceptionally damaging. This doctrine dictates that courts will refuse to hear a case if they find that it presents a political question. Ironically, it has been the basis for verdicts against political opponents that are stated as “non-political.”
There have been some victories too
But there have been legal victories for the rebels, too. Taking a leaf from “those who once contested the rulings of the Apartheid regime in South Africa,” in the words of Professor Mbaziira, writs of habeas corpus have surfaced for ‘disappeared’ political prisoners; draconian laws have been challenged, and private prosecution of rogue security personnel has resulted in some victories. The most famous case in this regard is the private prosecution by NETPIL of former police inspector general Kale Kayihura, who was found responsible for dozens of deaths and disappearances. After the court case in Uganda, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed Kayihura under sanctions in 2019.
A few years later, in December 2022, the Ugandan Constitutional Court handed lawyer Francis Tumwesige Ateenyi a win when it declared unconstitutional certain sections of the Penal Code that provided for the offences of being “rogue” and “vagabond.” Law enforcement officers had routinely used these offences to arrest and persecute protestors, the poor, and marginalised persons.
More recently, in the case of opposition MP Michael Kabaziguruka, who had been tried for ‘treason’ in a military court in 2021, vigorous defence by his lawyers resulted in a Supreme Court victory in 2025, when the court declared the part of the Uganda Peoples' Defence (UPDF) Act that provides for the trial of civilians in military courts unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s decision also meant that scores of opposition supporters who have been incarcerated by military courts on frivolous charges, such as wearing a red beret, should now either be set free or have their trials transferred to civilian courts. In March 2025, opposition supporter Nicholas Lutalo, who had been abducted by gun-wielding men and held in incommunicado detention for five days, was released after a writ of habeas corpus was filed in the High Court.
Hunger strike
In Kizza Besigye’s case, the prisoner himself helped score a win, too. When this ‘enemy of the state’s’ solitary detention continued despite the Supreme Court’s decision to remove him from the military court, Besigye went on a hunger strike, which was widely publicised and supported by social media and legal activists. A month later, on 1 February 2025, the state rushed a visibly frail Besigye, confined to a wheelchair, to the Nakawa Magistrate Court in Kampala, where he was now charged before a civilian court.
The president was unhappy about the “wrong decision” by the court
An unhappy President Museveni then instructed the Attorney General to draft an amendment to the UPDF Act, which seeks to restore military trial of civilians who are charged with possession of weapons. “I was sorry to hear of the wrong decision by the Supreme Court (…),” Museveni commented. “This is an instrument we cannot and will not abandon.”
Lawyers from five countries
In the ongoing struggle, legal allies have been found from other countries in Africa, too. If the spectre of a multi-country force had caused the Ugandan secret service to haul Kizza Besigye away from his ‘conspiratorial’ meeting in Kenya, the plan partially backfired. On 4 February 2025, two and a half months after Besigye and Lutale’s abduction from Nairobi, and three days after their transfer to the civilian Luzira prison, a coterie of lawyers from across Africa—including from Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon and the Comoro Islands—gathered there to put pressure on the authorities for a quick and fair trial.
The Kenyan Law Society helped to defend the case in Uganda
The group was led by Martha Karua, a prominent lawyer and former Kenyan Justice Minister, as well as Besigye’s good friend. It included five other human rights lawyers from Kenya, Tanzania, and the Comoros. Karua was by then already leading an international campaign to free Besigye and had also already scored a win after the Ugandan Law Council, under pressure from the government, had denied her a practising licence in that country. The Kenya Law Society had come to Karua’s aid, threatening to halt Ugandan lawyers from practising in the neighbouring state in retaliation, and accusing the Uganda Law Council of eroding gains made towards cross-border legal practice. On 7 January 2025 — coincidentally the same day that Besigye’s Ugandan lawyer Eron Kiiza had joined his client in the dock after expressing his anger at the military court — the Uganda Law Council reversed its decision and granted Karua a practising licence.
Gathering at Luzira Prison almost a month later, the group confronted military police officers who received them with guns drawn and finally got to see Besigye. Two weeks later, on February 18, 2025, a joint statement by Amnesty International, the International Committee of Jurists, and eight other organisations called for the immediate unconditional release of Besigye, his co-accused, lawyer Eron Kiiza, “and others unlawfully detained.” The organisations stated that “the abduction and rendition of Kizza Besigye and Obeid Lutale blatantly violated international human rights law and the principles of extradition treaties.”
The judge said he was not a Nazi
Though remaining in jail, Besigye and his co-accused appear to be treated with some civility, as their trial is now before civilian courts, while the judiciary continues to face ever-new unruly tactics. On 19 February, when High Court presiding Judge Karekona Singiza dismissed a release application for Besigye and Lutale, he became the target of well-known cartoonist, philosophy lecturer, and Agora group member Jim Sspire Ssentongo, who portrayed Singiza as a Nazi executioner judge. The judge, clearly miffed, then stated publicly that “he was not a Nazi judge” and that “in many jurisdictions of the world, any depiction of an individual judge is prima facie evidence of criminal prejudice.” He also asked journalists, contrary to normal media practice in Uganda, to stop filming his face.
Jail, exile and the freezing of accounts
While the Nazi cartoon may have inconvenienced the judge, engagement with such cases is much riskier for the legal rebels, including those who don’t shout or gesticulate in court. Lawyer Nicholas Opiyo has been imprisoned; his organisation, Chapter Four—an NGO dedicated to the protection of civil liberties and promotion of human rights—has been suspended and its accounts frozen, making it difficult for human rights activities to receive funding from abroad. Ladlaus Rwakafuuzi, a human rights lawyer who represented poor individuals detained without trial as well as ‘terror suspects’, is currently ailing after suffering a stroke and moves about in a wheelchair; the stress of his activities is thought to have contributed to his condition. ‘Legal rebel’ and rudeness champion Ssemakadde now resides in exile, together with his rude role models, authors Kakwenza Rukirabashaya and Stella Nyanzi, after having been sentenced in absentia—while on a trip abroad—to two years’ imprisonment for contempt of court. High Court Judge Musa Sekaana, who issued this verdict, has since been promoted.
Europe’s blind eye
In an interview with ZAM, Agather Atuhaire takes issue with “some European diplomats” who hesitated to protest the detention of lawyer Eron Kiiza out of fear that Kiiza’s actions might really have amounted to ‘contempt of court.’ “That’s what they said, what if he is guilty of that? I asked them, even if he did shout, can you just jail a lawyer for nine months without a trial? But they did not even issue one of their meaningless statements.”
“The West cannot always be counted on to defend the rule of law”
Like Atuhaire, fellow human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo says he regrets that “Uganda’s development partners in the West cannot always be counted on” to help defend the rule of law and democracy. “They turn a blind eye if it serves their interests. These partnerships rest on economic and military interests rather than values.” In his view, the opposite should be the case: “We must summon national and international systems to sanction judicial officers who do wrong. Their misdeeds should elicit consequences.” Opiyo cites the example of a recent case of Western sanctioning of a corrupt Ugandan political elite member, which, in July last year, inspired thousands to march on parliament in Kampala, demanding Speaker Annet Among’s resignation. Museveni’s guards, armed with automatic rifles, erected garrisons across roads leading to Parliament and detained young protestors. Among is still the speaker, but the example shows the ripple effect of an international community standing in solidarity with the Gen Z movement. “We need much more of this.”
See all the instalments in this Transnational Investigation here:
Legal Rebels | Cameroon, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi & Ghana
Cameroon | A new alliance
Nigeria | Breaking up the family
Malawi | Naming and shaming
Ghana | Smaller and bigger victories
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