A Ugandan student has been imprisoned for two months over a social media post criticising the country’s president, police said Wednesday, provoking alarm over freedom of speech ahead of next year’s election.
President Yoweri Museveni is hoping to extend his 40-year rule over the East African country at the elections in January, as rights groups warn of growing repression.
Elson Tumwine, an agriculture student, went missing on June 8 in the western district of Hoima, where he was on an internship.
Following a public outcry over allegations he had been abducted, Tumwine resurfaced at a police station last week before being formally charged over a TikTok post.
The post involved a doctored clip that made it seem like Uganda’s parliament speaker Anita Among was accusing Museveni of various past atrocities.
Tumwine pleaded guilty to offensive communication in a court in the central town of Entebbe and apologised for the post, police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke told said.
The video “intended to ridicule, demean and incite hostility against the president of Uganda and the speaker of parliament, Anita Among,” the police spokesperson said.
Human rights lawyer Kato Tumusiime said Tumwine was “one of the several victims of a shrinking media and free-speech space in Uganda.
“We are seeing a worrying trend of social media users being charged with similar offences as Tumwine on the pretext of ridiculing and demeaning the president as we head to the general elections,” he said.
In November, a Ugandan court convicted another TikToker over a clip that prosecutors said insulted Museveni.
