Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi has filed an arbitrary detention complaint at the United Nations to challenge his de facto house arrest that has so far run for days.
Pushed to the limit and angling for freedom, Mr Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine took to his Twitter to reveal his next legal moves through the help of a Nigerian counsel.
‘‘Nigerian human rights lawyer Femi Falana has filed this complaint on my behalf to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Arrest. We are challenging my continued illegal confinement by the Ugandan police and the military,’’ Wine tweeted.
The Kampala administration has been under fire for clamping down opposition supporters and two presidential candidates in the January 14 election. Of recent is the January 18, 2021, incident in which the government led a crackdown on the supporters of Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, who were demanding for his freedom.
Wine, 38, vied against President Yoweri Museveni and nine other contenders in the last general election and finished second with 3.4 million votes. Museveni got in excess of 5 million votes and was declared the winner on Saturday January 16. After the voting, the police marooned Bobi’s Kampala residence and have kept his family indoors even as he protested in demand for his release.
‘‘It’s now four days since the military surrounded our home and placed my wife and I under house arrest. We have run out of food supplies and when my wife tried to pick food from the garden yesterday, she was blocked and assaulted by the soldiers staged in our compound,’’ he tweeted on January 17, Sunday.
He then revealed that his colleague, Zaake Butebi, had been intercepted while on his way to his home and brutalised by the military.
‘‘Everyone including media and my party officials are restricted from accessing me.
Zaake Francis was arrested outside my gate as he made his way to my house; he was badly beaten by soldiers. He is now in Rubaga Hospital,’’ he tweeted.
So daring were the Ugandan police that they also stopped the US ambassador Uganda Natalie Brown. But Ugandan authorities denied the claims.
HRW gives verdict
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, an American civil rights body, has discredited the recently concluded Ugandan general election over human rights abuse and violence.
The body stated that the Ugandan election was marred with police brutality meted on opposition supporters and journalists; disruption of opposition rallies and restriction on freedom of speech and therefore failed integrity test.
‘‘A democratic playing field for free and fair elections was worryingly absent during these elections,’’ said HRW researcher Oryrem Nyeko in a press statement.
‘‘Instead of restricting free expression, movement , and assembly, the Ugandan government should take concrete steps to improve respect for human rights for all and remove all remaining restrictions,’’ he further said.