A Ugandan university student who mysteriously went missing two months ago after posting a TikTok video that harshly criticised President Yoweri Museveni’s leadership has been jailed.
Elson Tumwine disappeared on June 8 – sparking accusations from opposition figures and activists that he had been abducted and illegally detained by military agents.
Following an outcry over his disappearance, he was then reportedly left at a police station in Entebbe in mid-July and was subsequently charged with offensive communication and computer misuse.
He pleaded guilty and asked for forgiveness. The magistrates’ court in Entebbe sentenced him to two months in jail on Monday, noting his pleas for leniency.
Tumwine’s sentencing and alleged abduction have raised concerns among human rights activists around freedom of speech ahead of elections next year.
In court, the third-year Makerere University undergraduate admitted to posting the video that prosecutors said was intended “to ridicule, demean and incite hostility”.
He is alleged to have doctored a clip of the parliamentary speaker’s response to a general apology Museveni issued in May to the Baganda people, Uganda’s largest ethnic group and who form the traditional Buganda kingdom.
Over Museveni’s nearly four decades in power, relations with the kingdom and its monarch have at times been strained. The kingdom has no political power but remains influential.
Tumwine’s TikTok post accused the 80-year-old president of not apologising for other things during his time in power.
When Tumwine’s disappeared in June, Makerere University issued an urgent appeal for information that could help find him.
He had been working as an agricultural intern in Hoima, western Uganda, as part of his studies at the time he went missing.
Two weeks ago, the secretary-general of opposition NUP party, David Lewis Rubongoya, said they had information that Tumwine and another suspect were being held at a police station in Entebbe – having being “dumped” there on July 13.
