Uganda

The 80-year-old leader pledges economic growth from today’s GDP of $66bn to $500bn within the next five years.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has confirmed he will contest next year’s presidential election, setting the stage for a potential extension of his nearly 40-year rule.

The 80-year-old announced late on Saturday that he had expressed his interest “in running for … the position of presidential flag bearer” for his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

Museveni seized power in 1986 after a five-year civil war and has ruled ever since.

The NRM has altered the constitution twice to remove term and age limits, clearing the way for Museveni to extend his tenure.

Rights groups accused him of using security forces and state patronage to suppress dissent and entrench his power – claims he denies.

Museveni said he seeks re-election to transform Uganda into a “$500bn economy in the next five years”. According to government data, the country’s current gross domestic product stands at just under $66bn.

Ugandans are due to vote in January to choose a president and members of parliament.

Challenger

Opposition leader Bobi Wine, a pop star-turned-politician whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has confirmed he will run again. Wine rejected the 2021 results, alleging widespread fraud, ballot tampering and intimidation by security forces.

Tensions have risen in recent months after parliament passed a law allowing military courts to try civilians, a practice the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in January.

The government insisted the change is necessary to tackle threats to national security, but rights organisations and opposition figures argued it is a tool to intimidate and silence critics.

Uganda for years has used military courts to prosecute opposition politicians and government critics.

In 2018, Wine was charged in a military court with illegal possession of firearms. The charges were later dropped.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised Uganda’s military courts for failing to meet international standards of judicial independence and fairness.

Oryem Nyeko, senior Africa researcher at HRW, said this year: “The Ugandan authorities have for years misused military courts to crack down on opponents and critics.”

On a humid, late afternoon in November, Edith sits giggling loudly and bantering with two older members of her team during a lull between heavy rain showers. They watch as younger staff members dodge puddles and sweat through a daily aerobics routine in the muddy courtyard.

As energetic pop music blares across the compound made up of three single- and double-storey buildings, seven-year-old Diego, who has cerebral palsy, heads up a concrete ramp towards a therapy room. His wrists twisted, he crawls forward slowly until Edith spots him.

“Diego, my boy!” the 49-year-old calls out with a wide grin.

She runs over to him, her loose dress billowing as she scoops him up and swings him quickly onto her hip. He gives her a high five, and the two laugh before turning their attention to the workout.

The warmth and affection between Edith and her staff and the children at the orphanage make the place feel like it belongs to a very large family.

Edith’s own journey as a disability rights figure in Uganda began in 2000 with the birth of her first child, Derrick, in Jinja.

When Derrick was two days old, he turned yellow and cried excessively. So Edith and her husband, Richard, took him to a hospital where he was misdiagnosed with malaria. For two weeks, their son suffered convulsions, and upon seeing another doctor, he was found to have complications with his spinal cord after contracting meningitis.

“When he made three months, this is when I realised that my son was not growing as a normal child. He had poor head control. He had a curved spinal cord. He was very floppy,” Edith recalls while sitting in her office. Its walls are adorned with certificates of appreciation and merit, and a portrait of President Yoweri Museveni hangs above the door.

As she looks out a window onto a playground full of children, Edith recalls how she and Richard struggled to get information about their son’s condition and were ostracised by their friends and family who were fearful of them and Derrick.

“We started coming into the hospital, in and out. Home, hospital, home, hospital. And with his situation, especially with convulsions, people were like, ‘He has got epilepsy. He has demons.’ And this is where I was rejected by the community,” she says.

“They were like, ‘She gave birth to a demon-possessed child.’”

Historically and until today, education about disabilities has not been promoted through government-run schools or local clinics, leading many Ugandans to resort to traditional healing. Without a diagnosis and feeling helpless, Edith succumbed to social pressure and took her son to traditional healers.

“I tried to take him to different witch doctors. They were cutting him all over the body, smearing him with their herbs, washing him with blood of the chicken, the blood of the goat. They could take us in at night to shower us with the blood of the chicken, but still, Derrick didn’t change,” she recalls. “It was just worsening.”

But then an elderly couple at her church encouraged her to return to the hospital and supported her family. So Edith returned with Derrick to the hospital. After 12 months, he was diagnosed with permanent disability. The prolonged lack of treatment for meningitis had led to severe brain damage and cerebral palsy, leaving him nonverbal and unable to walk or feed himself for the rest of his life.

Kampala, Uganda – It was June 5 when Ugandan soldiers arrived in Kasenyi, a town on the shores of Lake Albert in Ituri province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Uganda’s army chief, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, posted a video on X showing what he said were residents “enthusiastically” welcoming the soldiers, as Chris Magezi, an aide to Kainerugaba and at the time acting spokesperson for Uganda’s People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) said the army had “occupied” it together with another Congolese town, Tchomia.

When Kampala first deployed troops to eastern DRC in November 2021, they were in pursuit of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group with Ugandan roots whose strongholds were located in Beni territory, in DRC’s North Kivu province. The group initially fought against the Ugandan government in pursuit of regime change, but from the 2010s onwards, it began aligning itself with the Islamic State Central Africa Province. In Uganda, the government accused the ADF of being behind several high-profile assassinations, while both countries blamed it for massacring civilians.

In 2021, during that first joint military operation between the Ugandan and Congolese armies, towns like Kasenyi remained unaffected.

But today, the Ugandan army’s footprint has expanded well beyond its original mission and into Ituri, by its own admission. This is despite the fact that the ADF, which has since dispersed and relocated far from its traditional bases, is not active in Kasenyi or other areas where the military has recently been operating, observers note.

In a statement in February, General Kainerugaba declared that Uganda would secure the entire border it shares with DRC: “That is our sphere of influence. Nothing will happen there without our permission,” he said on X.

On social media, Kainerugaba has frequently inserted himself into conversations about internal conflicts and the regional dynamics of the Congolese crisis.

He has openly expressed support for the M23 rebel group that has made rapid advancements in eastern DRC this year, seizing control of the capital cities of both North and South Kivu provinces.

M23 is reportedly backed by Rwanda and Uganda, according to various United Nations reports, though both countries have denied these allegations.

Economic interests

The expansion of the Ugandan army’s area of operation reflects Kampala’s shifting priorities in eastern DRC, according to army spokesperson Felix Kulayigye. He said the army is protecting Congolese communities as well as Uganda’s economic interests in the neighbouring country.

“Who is consuming Uganda’s products? Can commerce take place where there is instability? If we have commercial interests in eastern DRC, are those protectable or not?” Kulayigye told Al Jazeera.

From the start, Uganda’s military presence in DRC has carried an economic subtext.

According to a 2023 report by Deutsche Welle, as part of the agreement with the Kinshasa government to combat the ADF, Uganda was granted permission to build tarmac roads connecting key towns in DRC – routes designed to boost the movement of goods and deepen Uganda’s trade footprint in the region.

Although the text of the agreement was not released to the public, Ugandan soldiers, military equipment and road construction equipment entered all entered DRC in November 2021.

Solomon Asiimwe, an international relations lecturer at Nkumba University in Kampala, says although Uganda’s pursuit of the ADF may have appeared to be security-driven, the overriding factor was economic, though this was “hidden under the carpet”.

While some Congolese may be angered by Uganda’s expanded deployment, he suggests they should also consider the benefit of a steady supply of goods from Uganda. “Even Congolese have interests in supplying minerals to Uganda; they benefit from infrastructure and peace,” he said.

Eastern DRC’s market has become a battleground of its own. A recent analysis by The East African valued regional exports to the DRC at $2.9bn over nearly three years, with Uganda commanding a 68 percent share. Kenyan financial institutions have also staked their claim, entering DRC through bank acquisitions and the market was highly profitable – until M23’s advance this year halted their expansion.

But this trade has a dark side. Over the years, analysts and UN reports have accused both Uganda and Rwanda of acting as conduits for smuggled Congolese minerals and agricultural products such as cocoa and coffee. The International Court of Justice in 2022 ordered Uganda to pay the DRC $325m in reparations for the illegal exploitation of natural resources during its military presence in eastern DRC between 1998 and 2003; Kampala has paid several instalments since.

Analysts argue that mineral exploitation is visible in export data of these countries: for instance, Uganda’s gold exports reached $3bn in 2024, despite the country lacking any significant large-scale gold deposits.

‘Violation of Congolese sovereignty’

Ugandan army spokesperson Kulayigye said his country’s expanded deployment in Ituri was requested by Congolese authorities seeking help in fighting other armed groups destabilising the province.

“We had an additional mission at the request of Congolese authorities to deal with negative elements within Ituri,” he said.

Al Jazeera reached out to Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya to respond to this claim, but he did not reply to our questions at the time of publication.

Meanwhile, Congolese experts were sceptical, questioning both the legality and legitimacy of Uganda’s expanded mission.

“Uganda doesn’t have an agreement with the Congolese army to be in some parts of Ituri,” said Reagan Miviri, a conflict researcher at Ebuteli, a Kinshasa-based think tank. “They entered Congolese soil without permission. This is a violation of Congolese sovereignty.”

According to Miviri, Kinshasa has been silent on Uganda’s expanded operation, not because of approval but because it doesn’t want to have to confront both Uganda and Rwanda at the same time.

But he admits that in many areas where Uganda has deployed, it has more presence than the Congolese army.

Kambale Musavuli, a Congolese political analyst, calls Uganda’s growing military presence an occupation – one that “should alarm every Congolese and African who believes in sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

In response to criticism from analysts, Kulayigye said he was “disappointed by intellectuals” who sit in comfort talking about nothing, while on the ground, “people are dying at the hands of militias”.

Reminders of Congo wars

For Congolese observers, Uganda’s behaviour follows a historical script. From 1996 to 2003, Uganda and Rwanda intervened heavily in DRC, initially backing the rebel group that overthrew longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and installed Laurent Kabila – only to later turn against him. Both countries subsequently supported various rebel factions attempting to oust Kabila.

Though international pressure forced Uganda and Rwanda to formally withdraw at the beginning of the century, both nations maintained ties to rebel groups, including M23, which was born out of the unresolved issues of the 1990s Congo wars.

In January and February this year, M23 captured key cities including Goma and Bukavu in eastern DRC, which they still hold. The UN accused Rwanda of deploying up to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers in the DRC, which helped rebels capture the cities, while Uganda has been accused of allowing M23 to get supplies and recruits through its territory.

“It’s a continuation of a pattern we have seen for decades, where neighbouring countries exploit instability in eastern Congo to pursue military and economic interests under the guise of security operations,” said Musavuli.

In the aftermath of the Congo wars, several reports emerged, including from the UN, that Rwanda and Uganda were targeting Hutu civilians and looting and smuggling resources like coffee, diamonds, timber and coltan from the DRC.

Josaphat Musamba, a Congolese researcher at Ghent University in Belgium, sees direct links between today’s conflicts and the wars of the 1990s in a cast of characters that remains strikingly familiar: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and former Congolese President Joseph Kabila – who is now based in Goma, an area under M23 control – were key players in those earlier conflicts.

“If you look at [today’s M23] commanders, you can connect them to those who were fighting in the First Congo War,” Musamba said. “All of them were working with Rwandan officers like James Kabarebe. I know two or three commanders of M23, and one of them was part of James Kabarebe’s bodyguard,” he claimed.

Kabarebe, now Rwanda’s state minister for regional integration, was a central figure in the rebellion that toppled Mobutu. He later served as army chief of staff under Laurent Kabila, the former Congolese leader and father of Joseph Kabila. Kabarebe was sanctioned by the US government for being “central to Rwanda’s support for the March 23 [M23]”.

Researchers also note that after M23’s first rebellion in the DRC failed in 2012-2013, many rebels fled across the borders to Rwanda and Uganda.

Congolese researchers say that while Kampala and Kigali may claim to be addressing security threats and rebel groups in eastern DRC – like ADF and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), whose remnants were linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda – they are effectively carving out zones of control and economic exploitation in eastern DRC, just as they did in the 1990s.

The Congolese people, meanwhile, remain displaced, impoverished and without security. The UN said in April that renewed fighting with M23 this year had displaced nearly four million people in North and South Kivu alone.

“I don’t believe that Uganda [soldiers] have good intentions, especially in the operation in Ituri,” said Miviri. “I don’t understand why they are there.”

Amnesty International says torture, killings and enforced disappearances have taken place in areas under rebel control.

M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have committed serious abuses against civilians, “including torture, killings and enforced disappearances”, in areas under their control, according to Amnesty International.

“These acts violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes,” Amnesty said in a statement on Tuesday.

The allegations come amid a renewed surge in violence that erupted in January, when the Rwandan-backed M23 group captured the strategic city of Goma in North Kivu province. The rebels went on to seize Bukavu in South Kivu in February, escalating a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands.

Between February and April, Amnesty researchers spoke to 18 people who had been detained by M23 in Goma and Bukavu. Many said they were held on accusations of supporting the Congolese army or government – claims for which no proof was presented. Several were not told why they were being held.

According to Amnesty, detainees were crammed into overcrowded, unhygienic cells, lacking adequate food, water, sanitation and medical care. Some of those interviewed said they saw fellow prisoners die due to these conditions or from acts of torture.

Witnesses described gruesome scenes, including two detainees being bludgeoned to death with hammers and another shot dead on the spot.

All of the former detainees said they were either tortured or saw others being tortured with wooden sticks, electric cables or engine belts, the rights group said.

Relatives searching for the missing were often turned away by M23 fighters, who denied the detainees were being held – actions Amnesty says amount to enforced disappearances.

Peace deal remains elusive

“M23’s public statements about bringing order to eastern DRC mask their horrific treatment of detainees. They brutally punish those who they believe oppose them and intimidate others, so no one dares to challenge them,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa.

“Regional and international actors must pressure Rwanda to cease its support for M23,” added Chagutah.

The United Nations and DRC’s government say Rwanda has supported M23 by providing arms and sending troops – an accusation Kigali denies.

The UN estimates that about 4,000 Rwandan soldiers support M23.

M23 is among roughly 100 armed groups fighting for control in eastern DRC, a region rich in minerals and bordering Rwanda. The ongoing conflict has driven more than seven million people from their homes, including 100,000 who fled this year alone.

Despite recent pledges by the Congolese army and the rebels to seek a truce, clashes have continued. M23 previously threatened to advance as far as the capital, Kinshasa, more than 1,600km (1,000 miles) away.

In April, Rwanda and DRC agreed to draft a peace deal by May 2, committing to respect each other’s sovereignty and refraining from providing military support to armed groups.

Last week, Ugandan lawyer Agather Atuhaire was finally set free five days after she was detained by the Tanzanian police for unclear reasons. She was unceremoniously dumped at the Mutukula border crossing between the two countries.

Details of Atuhaire’s condition remain unclear, but a statement from the organisation she works with as well as Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi, who was detained with her, alleged that she was tortured. He himself showed signs of physical abuse after he was also dumped at the Kenya-Tanzania border a day earlier.

For East Africans, Atuhaire and Mwangi’s ordeal has been a painful reminder of just how far democracy in the region has retreated. People organising to resist state excesses have been increasingly facing structural and physical violence with little space for redress.

Mwangi and Atuhaire were among a small group of regional activists and political figures who flew into Tanzania to show solidarity with Tundu Lissu, the leader of the Tanzanian opposition. Lissu is facing several charges, the most grievous among them treason, for comments he allegedly made at a political rally.

But Lissu is not alone in the region in facing reprisals for political action. In neighbouring Uganda, leader of the opposition Kizza Besigye is facing the same charges, based on the same idea that organising and leading opposition against an entrenched political power amounts to treason.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, the aftermath of the 2024 anti-finance bill protests is haunting the country. In the absence of a well organised political opposition, which is stymied by frenetic deal-making and horse-trading, protesters and youth activists have become the country’s unofficial political opposition.

The youth have borne the brunt of political violence during last year’s protests, which killed at least 82 people. Kidnappings and abductions of protesters spiked after the demonstrations, and activist groups alleged that some people remain unaccounted for despite President William Ruto’s assertion to the contrary.

In Burundi, people continue to live under the shadow of police excesses and in fear of the possibility of war with its expansionist neighbours.

In Rwanda, several opposition figures who tried to run against President Paul Kagame were jailed on various charges. The neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo is perennially caught between war and political crisis.

So how did we get to this state of affairs? The simplest answer is that we allowed ourselves to conflate elections with democracy, and the malicious intentions of those who wield power took advantage of that faith. The reality of building robust democratic systems is far more complicated than lining up to vote every four or five years, and real democracy requires round the clock vigilance.

A meaningful democracy requires robust local government, transparent political parties as well as institutional accountability and participation, all of which have been on the retreat in the region in the past two decades.

Power has remained highly centralised in the executive, enabled by the capitulation of legislatures and the “naomba serekali” (“I am requesting of the government”) approach to politics.

Parliaments are empowered by the legitimacy of a popular vote, but they repeatedly submit to the executive. Proof of this can be easily found in the experience of women trying to run for office in the region.

As outlined in a 2018 volume on the Kenyan election that I co-edited, Where Women Are: Gender and the 2017 Kenyan General Election, the weakness begins within political parties, in which candidates must kowtow to a kingpin to gain permission to appear on the ballot. Those who do not are often locked out from competitive electoral cycles. As a result, save for constitutional quotas, women’s participation in electoral politics has declined – a canary in the coalmine of shrinking democratic space.

Meanwhile, parties have mastered the art of managing gender optics as a substitute for real change, reducing debates about democracy to the periodic performance of voting. Thus, Samia Suluhu’s presidency in Tanzania is not a sign of improving democracy but rather that of a political machine that picked the least contentious candidate who would allow the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, to continue managing the country. Similarly, the dominance of women in Rwanda’s parliament is not in itself indicative of progress for women but of the ability of the ruling party to select candidates who are less likely to push back.

Once these candidates are laundered through the political party machine, they enter the legislature more beholden to their political kingpin than to voters. And this is the case whether the kingpin is in government or in the opposition.

In Kenya, opposition candidates like Edwin Sifuna, who vociferously defended the rights of protesters during the June 2024 protests, have become tongue-tied in 2025 because their party kingpin has since struck a deal with Ruto and blind obeisance is the only guaranteed pathway to power in this system.

In Uganda, politicians are bought off with state cars and loans, and in Tanzania, they are silenced by arrests, detentions and disappearances of critics of the state. The net effect is that elections become a performance whose actual impact diminishes rapidly over time.

A quick scan of global politics will affirm that this is not a uniquely East African problem. The same crisis is taking shape in the United States, particularly after the evisceration of the Republican Party by Tea Party politics and of the Democratic Party by careerist politicians.

But the events of the last week show that for East Africa, an extra layer of risk exists because of the unquestioning and blind loyalty of security services to the whims of the state – something the current US administration seeks to build into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The long-term solution to this state of affairs is for ordinary people to become more engaged in localised democratic practices, changing the quality of people who rise up the ranks in politics. Of course, this can be difficult when people are merely trying to survive a hostile political and economic climate, but in the long term, it creates new entry points for civic engagement.

Democracy is strengthened when more people participate in the governance of civic institutions like schools, hospitals, trade unions, cooperatives, neighbourhood associations, and even sports and social clubs – in processes that they can immediately connect to their quality of life.

Elections then become the culmination of four or five years of regular exercises of democracy, not a separate process that floats above the reality of people’s lives.

In parallel, the onus is on the legislators of East Africa to find their teeth and their purpose. Their job is not political survival or the pursuit of political careers. Their job is to defend the people who elected them, to rein in the excesses of the executive and to defend the integrity of the constitution.

Meanwhile, we, the people, should all heed the call of Nigerian public intellectual Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: “Don’t agonise, organise,” and seek to rebuild democracy in East Africa from the ground up.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

East African rights groups condemn Tanzania, saying human right activists ‘abandoned’ at border show signs of torture.

A Ugandan human rights activist, arrested in Tanzania after travelling to the country to support an opposition politician at a trial for treason, has been tortured and dumped at the border, according to an NGO.

Ugandan rights group Agora Discourse said on Friday that activist and journalist Agather Atuhaire had been “abandoned at the border by Tanzanian authorities” and showed signs of torture.

The statement echoes reports regarding a Kenyan activist detained at the same time and released a day earlier, and supports complaints of a crackdown on democracy across East Africa.

Atuhaire had travelled to Tanzania alongside Kenyan anticorruption campaigner Boniface Mwangi to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who appeared in court on Monday.

Both were arrested shortly after the hearing and held incommunicado.

Tanzanian police had initially told local rights groups that the pair would be deported by air. However, Mwangi was discovered on Thursday on a roadside in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border.

Agora Discourse said it was “relieved to inform the public that Agather has been found”. However, the rights group’s cofounder Jim Spire Ssentongo confirmed to the AFP news agency on Friday that there were “indications of torture”.

‘Worse than dogs’

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been accused of increasing authoritarianism, amid rising concerns regarding democracy across East Africa.

Activists travelling to Lissu’s trail accused Tanzania of “collaborating” with Kenya and Uganda in their “total erosion of democratic principles”.

Several high-profile political arrests have highlighted the rights record of Hassan, who plans to seek re-election in October.

The Tanzanian leader has said that her government is committed to respecting human rights. However, she warned earlier this week that foreign activists would not be tolerated in the country as Lissu appeared in court.

“Do not allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here,” Hassan instructed security services.

Several activists from Kenya, including a former justice minister, said they were denied entry to Tanzania as they tried to travel to attend the trial.

Following his return to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Mwangi said that he and Atuhaire had suffered a brutal experience.

“We were both treated worse than dogs, chained, blindfolded and underwent a very gruesome torture,” he told reporters.

“The Government of Tanzania cannot hide behind national sovereignty to justify committing serious crimes and human rights violations against its own citizens and other East Africans,” the International Commission of Jurists in Kenya said in a statement.

President Yoweri Museveni’s government has frequently defended military trials, citing national security concerns.

Uganda’s parliament has passed a controversial bill authorising military tribunals for civilians, drawing condemnation from opposition figures and rights groups, who accuse the government of trying to silence opponents, which it denies.

The practice has long been used in Uganda, but was struck down by the country’s top court in January. The Supreme Court had ruled that the military tribunals lacked legal competence to try civilians and failed to meet fair trial standards.

Despite that ruling, lawmakers moved ahead Tuesday with the legislation, which permits civilians to be tried in military courts.

“Today, you proved you are fearless patriots! Uganda will remember your courage and commitment,” said General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, head of the military and son of President Yoweri Museveni, in a post on X.

Earlier this month, Kainerugaba said that he was holding a missing opposition activist in his basement and threatened violence against him, after the man’s party said he was abducted.

Museveni’s government has frequently defended military trials as necessary for national security amid concerns about armed opposition and alleged threats to state stability.

Military spokesperson Chris Magezi said the legislation would “deal decisively with armed violent criminals, deter the formation of militant political groups that seek to subvert democratic processes, and ensure national security is bound on a firm foundational base”.

But critics say the move is part of a broader pattern of repression. “There’s no legal basis to provide for the trial of civilians in the military court,” opposition MP Jonathan Odur told parliament during debate on the bill. He described the legislation as “shallow, unreasonable and unconstitutional”.

Uganda has for years used military courts to prosecute opposition politicians and government critics.

In 2018, pop star-turned-opposition-leader Bobi Wine was charged in a military court with illegal possession of firearms. The charges were later dropped.

Kizza Besigye, a veteran opposition figure who has challenged Museveni in multiple elections, was arrested in Kenya last year and returned to Uganda to face a military tribunal.

Following the Supreme Court’s January ruling, his trial was moved to a civilian court. His party, the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF), has denounced the charges as politically motivated.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has previously criticised Uganda’s military courts for failing to meet international standards of judicial independence and fairness.

Oryem Nyeko, senior Africa researcher at HRW, said earlier this year: “The Ugandan authorities have for years misused military courts to crack down on opponents and critics”.