Thirty-three years into the realms of power, Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is yet to have enough of it. The rise of opposition politician and musician Robert Kyagulanyi, commonly known as Bobi Wine fueled rivalry that has seen third-party dragged into the fiasco.
On 29 April 2019, Bobi Wine was summoned to the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) in Kampala to provide a statement on a concert he had planned to hold last week that was cancelled by the police. According to reports, on his way the CID offices, he was violently ejected from his car, pushed into a police van that drove to Naggalama police station, about 38km northeast of Kampala.
He was later returned to the capital and arraigned in the Buganda Road Court where was charged with holding an illegal assembly and procession in July 2018, when he led a street protest against Uganda’s then newly-imposed social media tax. He was held at Luzira Maximum Security Prison but released later. He will be returning to Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court today.
“It is not a crime for Bobi Wine to hold a concert or organize a protest; it is a right enshrined in Ugandan and international law. The Ugandan authorities must immediately free Bobi Wine and stop misusing the law in a shameless attempt to silence him for criticizing the government,” Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, Seif Magango said.
The Ugandan Authority left no stones unturned as its communication regulator reached for the culprits who broadcasted Bobi Wine’s blocked concert, slapping them with a suspension.
UPDATE: Communications regulator has ordered the suspension of 39 journalists from 13 media houses over the broadcast of a procession around @HEBobiwine as he went to a blocked concert in Busabala.
UCC says content was sensational and gave undue prominence to individuals
— Mujuni Raymond (@qataharraymond) May 1, 2019
Police called off a press conference and concert he was due to hold in Kampala on 22 April and placed him under house arrest and has been prevented from holding any concert since September 2018 when he returned to Uganda from the US.
