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An acquittance invited Habib Buwembo, 42, a renown political activist, for a meeting at a Kampala hotel in January 2017. When Buwembo arrived, the acquittance asked him to sit, and excused himself. Suddenly, Anita Among (now the speaker of parliament), then an ordinary Member of Parliament, a few months into her first term, showed up with two other politicians. 

Buwembo was surprised. He had not expected to meet Among here. But they both knew each other as leaders in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Among had previously served on the party’s National Executive Committee as deputy treasury. Buwembo was also a member of the party’s NEC as the national secretary for labour and pensions. 

A father of three and husband of two wives, Buwembo’s demeanor can be misleading. Initially, he appears soft-spoken and somewhat shy. But as our conversation goes into his run-ins with security operatives (he has been arrested and detained in countless police cells and prisons including Kitalya and Luzira), because of his decades’ long fight for human rights, which is what he is most known for, his eyes widen, and his voice gets deeper and coarser. It is hard to miss the parallels between him and four-time presidential contender, Kizza Besigye, who he immediately reveals inspired and emboldened his already budding knack for fighting injustice and leadership. 

A father of three and husband of two wives, Buwembo’s demeanor can be misleading. Initially, he appears soft-spoken and somewhat shy. But as our conversation goes into his run-ins with security operatives (he has been arrested and detained in countless police cells and prisons including Kitalya and Luzira), because of his decades’ long fight for human rights, which is what he is most known for, his eyes widen, and his voice gets deeper and coarser. It is hard to miss the parallels between him and four-time presidential contender, Kizza Besigye, who he immediately reveals inspired and emboldened his already budding knack for fighting injustice and leadership. 

As a senior two student, Buwembo had started the Nateete Muslim Students Association (NAMUSA) and become its first chairperson. With in a few years, he had become the chairperson of the Inter Muslim Association of Kampala district (IMUSAK). These roles would lay a solid foundation for his politics and establish him as an influential actor in the Muslim community in Kampala—part of the reason Among deemed it important to meet him.

The ruling NRM had even initially attempted to recruit him as a student leader but he was more inclined towards the opposition.  After a short stint in JEEMA under the tutelage of its former secretary general, the late Hassan Kyanjo, Buwembo converted to FDC in 2011.  And he was immediately thrust at the centre of action– he had allocated himself the responsibility of protecting votes. The walk-to-work protests that followed that election, saw him arrested for the first time, and marked the beginning of endless run-ins with the authorities including with Among and her henchmen.

After a few pleasantries, Among went straight into it. Buwembo had sued then Rubaga South MP, the late Kato Lubwama, on grounds that the latter didn’t have the right academic qualifications. Up until then, election petitions were only allowed within 30 days after the election. Buwembo had gone to court many months after the 2016 elections, and court was about to rule on whether this was legal or not. Extending the window for hearing election petitions was a major threat for members of parliament (majority of whom were members of the ruling party), Among said. President Museveni had sent Among to negotiate with Buwembo and settle the matter out of court. If Buwembo was ready to reach an out of court settlement, he would walk away with a staggering Shs300 million.

Buwembo was stunned. He knew Among had gone to parliament as an Independent, but thought she was FDC-leaning. How was she now acting for President Museveni who they had been trying to unseat?

“That is a story for another day,” Among responded curtly, and quickly indicated she wanted to conclude the matter at hand.

Buwembo could not drop the case because he was not the only person involved in the matter. While the petition required him to gather 500 signatures from the constituents, with the support of fellow activists in the constituency, they had raised over 2000 signatures, he explained to Among. These players were stakeholders and couldn’t just be wished away.

Among insisted that the petition didn’t read Buwembo and others. It read Habib Buwembo v Kato Lubwama.

Feeling cornered, Buwembo said he needed at least three days to consult. Among warned him. “If you decline the win-win, where you accept the money and drop the case,” she said, “Please note that there is the lose-win.”

What would the lose-win entail? Buwembo asked.

“Well, you don’t get the money and still don’t win in court,” Among responded calmly. 

Buwembo mumbled that he had his fair shot because the judiciary is independent. “You really believe that? Among asked with a sneer, and shortly after excused herself.

“I didn’t know it then,” Buwembo said, “But looking back now, I am convinced she never forgave me.”

It would be the last time Buwembo would meet Among physically. But in a typical case of abuse of power, Among would get him severally arrested and detained, often spending hundreds of days in prison. Almost all the cases would be dropped because the complainant would not show up in court, and the prosecution couldn’t produce any evidence. Buwembo’s case is peculiar because he has been arrested and detained numerous times. But over a dozen other activists, journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary Ugandans, have revealed that they have been targeted, harassed, tortured, detained for merely criticizing or challenging Speaker Anita Among, amidst concerns of ever-growing abuse of power and stifling of dissent by her and other ruling party functionaries with over-sized political power.

Three days after the meeting with Among, court announced that he had won. But Lubwama immediately challenged the ruling. 

At the Court of Appeal, Buwembo found Justice Stephen Kavuma, then the Deputy Chief Justice. Alife-time member of the ruling party, who had served in the Resistance Council, at the party secretariat, and in different capacities as minister, before joining the judiciary, Kavuma had come to be known by the moniker ‘cadre judge’. Most of his rulings favoured the ruling party.

Buwembo had already briefed his lawyer, Isaac Ssemakadde (the current Uganda Law Society (ULS) President), about the encounter with Among. Ssemakadde had almost immediately concluded that it was clear the state had now opted for the lose-win Among had mentioned. It was pointless to expect justice from Kavuma, he said.

But Buwembo was hopeful. Kavuma had previously bungled up one of his cases. Buwembo was now convinced they could use that experience to demand Kavuma recuses himself from the case. 

In 2017, Buwembo and colleagues had sued then Police Chief, General Kale Kayihura, after police had brutalised their leader Kizza Besigye and his supporters. Besigye had been sued and granted bail for attempting to swear himself in as the president of Uganda following the 2016 elections. His supporters were accompanying him to his home when police descended upon them and unleashed terror. 

The day Kayihura was called to appear at Makindye Magistrate’s Court, members of Boda Boda 2010 led by Abdullah Kitata, who at the time worked closelt with the police chief, stormed court. They destabilised the court’s business, beat up people, and locked others inside court premises. The Chief Magistrate, Richard Mafabi, who had issued criminal summons against Kayihura and seven other senior police officers to answer torture charges, would later collapse and die under unclear circumstances. His wife said he died of a blood clot in the brain citing a post-mortem report, but Buwembo and other opposition activists suspected foul play.

Kavuma had picked that file, noting that that court handling it had no jurisdiction, and allocated it to himself but had gone ahead to ‘sit’ on it until the matter died out. Buwembo was convinced they could use that experience to force Kavuma out of the case. They petitioned court.

But the justice system allows judges to decide whether they are conflicted to handle a matter or not. After six months, Kavuma declined to recuse himself. In a ruling read by the court registrar, he said that he was not convinced that there were substantive grounds for him to recuse himself from the matter. He was ready to proceed and hear the case. Two and a half years later, he would retire without writing a single word on the file. 

Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo (now the Chief Justice), who succeeded Kavuma as the head of the Court of Appeal, took up the case together with the two other justices (Hellen Obura and Cheborion Barishaki). They called Buwembo and his lawyer and informed them that they would be taking on the case. At that meeting, they revealed that Kavuma’s bench had not written a single word on the file. But offered assurances that they would expedite the matter and offer Buwembo justice. 

A year and months later, with the nominations for a new term of office already done, around November 2020, the justices invited Buwembo and team for the ruling. When Buwembo saw the notice, he was shocked. What kind of ruling were they going to read without hearing us, Buwembo recalls wondering. 

“We immediately resolved that the lawyer remains behind, and I represent myself,” Buwembo noted. On the day of the ruling, only Barishaki was there. Buwembo didn’t wait. He shot up and said he had an issue to address to court.

“If you may recall, my lord,” he said, “the last day we appeared before you, you were introducing yourselves.” 

He added: “You notified us that the former bench had done nothing about the file. The current bench which you are part of has not heard from us. Now, what kind of ruling are we here for?” 

“Are you serious? the justice asked seemingly taken by surprise.

“No, is this the case?” he muttered, before asking for a 30-minute adjournment.

When he returned, he apologised and noted that they had mixed up the files. Buwembo wondered what would have happened if he had not been bold enough to question the justice. He resolved to ask his entire bench to also recuse itself from the matter because “they already had a ruling in mind”.

Another six months passed without any communication from the justices. Eventually, after the elections were done, and the defendant, Kato Lubwama had even lost the election for another term, they  called and gave the ruling, agreeing to recuse themselves from the bench.  

A new bench was constituted. It involved Justices Irene Mulyagonja, Geoffrey Kiryabwire, and Elizabeth Musoke. Around November 2021, they heard from Buwembo and team. Their ruling came in December 2021. Buwembo won and was awarded losses and damages. 

But by now, Kato Lubwama, had completed his five year term of office, and even lost the election for the second term in parliament. It had taken over 5 years.The law says that all election petition matters should be accorded expeditious process.

Nevertheless, Buwembo applied for damages of a billion shillings, which Kato challenged, saying it was exaggerated.

However, since it was a political matter and Kato had lost a political position, Buwembo wasn’t too keen on pursuing the debt. He was mostly sympathetic to Kato Lubwama. Kato later died of health complications.

“I pronounced that I had forgiven the debt,” Buwembo said, “I even wrote to court about the same. But the unfortunate part of the story is that Kato died when he had also not been given justice. He died when his application was not yet fixed for hearing.”

He added: “That leaves us wondering if they say that courts are temples of justice. In that story, where do you see justice?”

Yet his troubles were just beginning.

“I expected to be killed. I expected to be raped,” said Aloikin Praise Opoloje, a few days after she was released from detention on bail in August this year. 

The 25-year-old law student had been arrested, along with dozens of others, after taking part in an anti-corruption protest in Kampala on 23 July. During the arrest, one male police officer had put his hands between her legs and squeezed her genitals. Female officers had pulled her ponytail backwards and throttled her. 

But the worst was yet to come. At the Central Police Station in Kampala, where most of the arrestees were temporarily held, officers attacked Opoloje and her companions, slapping, kicking and hitting them with batons all over their bodies. 

“These are the ones distracting [sic] the peace that we have here?” one officer asked rhetorically. “Who has paid you to protest?”

That day alone, over 100 protestors, mostly young people, were arrested, denied bail and detained for close to two weeks. Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, ministers, and social media accounts belonging to ruling party supporters all claimed that the protestors had been funded by foreign actors to bring down the government. 

AGORA and IWPR have interviewed a dozen protesters arrested on 23 July, who – like Opoloje – all gave accounts of being physically abused in detention. Some suffered serious injuries that they have yet to recover from. They deny any link to foreign funding and say they merely wanted to state their opposition to corruption in Uganda – which ranks 141st among the 180 countries in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. 

Instead, they say, they were systematically abused and labelled enemies of Uganda. To date, none of the alleged perpetrators have been held accountable. 

Playing with fire 

Like many Ugandans, Opoloje was enraged by revelations earlier this year that government officials had been siphoning off billions of dollars’ worth of public funds for their own personal use. But the fact that parliament’s speaker and deputy speaker had procured generators for their homes at inflated prices made it personal: at the start of the year, Opoloje had given birth in a rural hospital, where she and her baby almost died due to shortages and a power cut. 

Opoloje started making videos about corruption and posting them on her social media accounts. She made contact with other like-minded young people, organising discussions on X/Twitter Spaces to generate ideas on how to protest. 

As a law student, Opoloje scrupulously suggested that they notify the police of their intent to protest. On 12 July, inspired partly by Kenya’s protests against the cost of living, the group wrote to the Kampala Metropolitan Police, saying they intended to lead a demonstration to parliament. Their key demand was that the speaker, Anita Among, resign. 

The police responded by threatening them and ordering them not to hold the protest. On 21 July, President Museveni warned the activists that they would be “playing with fire” if they went ahead.

“But by then,” Opoloje said, “I had no returning point. We had our demands and those were our demands: Anita must resign.”

Surrounded

On the day itself, Opoloje and a group of 25 others gathered at Garden City shopping mall, a few hundred metres away from parliament. Within minutes, police were deployed in the area. Suspecting that someone had tipped off the authorities, the group separated and moved to another street close to parliament. They pulled out their placards and started protesting. 

Police officers who had been trailing them quickly surrounded them and started making arrests. Throughout the day, other youths who had gathered in other parts of the city were also rounded up in the same way as they tried to protest.

It was after the arrests, at the Central Police Station, that mistreatment began in earnest. George Victor Otieno, another university student, tried to reason with officers, explaining that corruption cost Uganda dearly and resulted in government employees like themselves being badly paid.

“Why are you making a lot of noise here? Keep quiet,” shouted a senior officer. He barked out an order: “Take this gentleman away.” 

Otieno, Opoloje and other arrestees later identified the senior officer as Joel Ntabu, commander of the Kampala Metropolitan Police criminal investigations directorate, after his picture appeared on social media.

When the group arrived at the police station, having heard countless reports of torture in the cells, they had devised a plan to stay together. They held onto each other in order to stop officers from separating them.

Ntabu ordered several policemen to come and drag Otieno to one of the rooms. He also ordered that Opoloje be taken to another room.

“Make sure you do everything he tells you to do, because if you don’t do it, he’s going to kill you,” a female police officer told her. Despite being terrified, the student plucked up her courage.

“I asked: ‘Why would he kill me? What have I done wrong?’” Opoloje told us. “I said: ‘I have done nothing wrong. I am just protesting, which is my constitutional right.’”

In the secluded room, Ntabu immediately started slapping Opoloje. There were some benches and tables in one corner of the room. Ntabu pushed her into the tables, pulled her back and started slapping her again. She just kept crying and looking at him. 

Later, another officer brought her a sheet of paper on which to make a statement. But by this time, Opoloje said, she had been beaten so much she was no longer afraid. 

She declined to make a statement, insisting that she could only do this in the presence of her lawyer. Infuriated, the police officers led by Ntabu decided to take her to another room and torture her some more.

As they were taking her, she saw Otieno again. He was lying on the floor, his shirt in tatters, and a police officer was kicking him. 

“This man subjected me to a kind of torture I could only imagine, the kind of Russian-style thing that you see and hear people speaking of,” Otieno told us.

He said that the officers demanded he make a statement admitting he was being funded by foreign organisations and that he worked closely with Bobi Wine, Uganda’s leading opposition politician – who Otieno had never even met. 

“I was showered with beatings of batons. To date I have marks on my body,” he said. “I was kicked in my genitals while I was in that office. I lost my breath to the point that I was almost ready to give up and do everything they were telling me.”

Otieno added that most of his fellow arrestees were treated in the same manner.

 “Very bad things”

Reports of cruel treatment started emerging on X/Twitter the day after the protesters were arrested, from friends and family who had visited them in detention. Initially denied bail, most arrestees were released a fortnight later amid mounting public pressure. 

All 12 protesters who spoke to us named Commander Ntabu as a key perpetrator. Luke Owoyesigyire, the deputy spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Police, denied that Ntabu was involved. He told journalists on 5 August that Ntabu’s role was limited to supervising case files and that he does not conduct interrogations. 

Most of the arrestees, however, say Ntabu beat them up while trying to force them to make statements in the absence of their lawyers. Rather than offer to conduct a criminal investigation into their treatment, Kampala Metropolitan Police has advised the protesters to make a formal complaint to the Uganda Human Rights Commission. 

Eron Kiiza, a human rights lawyer who specialises in police violence cases and who is representing some of the protesters, said that the claims of mistreatment already made public should have been enough to prompt an investigation. 

“If police heard from the public that there was a terrorist group in a certain area,” Kiiza asked, “Would they sit back and wait for a formal complaint? The job of police is to detect crime, investigate it and apprehend the culprits. In this case the police know what happened, but they are simply not interested.”

Gideon Nova Kwikiriza, president of the activist group Ugandans on X, who was also arrested and beaten up in the cells, pointed out the irony that in other circumstances Ugandans can be arrested on the basis of social media posts.

“Why do you consider my complaint not formal when it is on X? Yet you use X to arrest people?” he said. 

On 25 July, Museveni issued a statement congratulating the security forces for halting the protests. He claimed that protesters were receiving foreign funding and that some had been planning “very bad” things against the people of Uganda. 

“Those very bad things will come out in court when those arrested are being tried,” said the president. “The evidence in court will shock many.” 

Physical and mental scars

So far, the evidence Museveni claimed to have access to has not materialised. The protesters continue to regularly appear in court as they await trial on charges of “common nuisance” – a colonial-era law that can carry a punishment of imprisonment for one year. 

Meanwhile, they must battle the physical and mental scars of their experiences. Opoloje has a mark on her neck from where her hair was pulled; Otieno says he now gets migraines. Kennedy Makana, another arrestee, said he developed hearing problems after being double-slapped on the ears. Yet another, Sadat Mugweri, is currently receiving treatment in a mental health facility. 

“He told me they would pour cold water and beat him while in detention,” Mugweri’s mother told us in a phone call, explaining that he had already been battling mental health issues before the protest. “That treatment worsened his situation.” 

Of the entire group of more than 100 people, Sammy Okanya is the most unfortunate. Badly beaten after his arrest, he has been denied bail four times and is still detained awaiting trial.

After a recent court hearing, we managed to visit Okanya in the holding cells. “I cannot currently hold urine because of the way I was tortured,” he said, adding that he had contracted tuberculosis while in prison. 

His lawyer, Ishaq Olega, said that he has asked the court to release Okanya and have his alleged abusers arrested, but his request was declined. “Everything is being handled with impunity,” he said. 

Okanya believes he is being singled out because he is a vocal critic of Museveni. “They want to instill fear in people that if they challenge the government they will be treated the same way I have been treated,” he said. 

This hasn’t deterred everyone from protesting, however. On 2 September, Opoloje and two other women, Norah Kobusingye and Kemitoma Kyenzibo, marched naked towards parliament with their bodies covered in anti-corruption messages. They were immediately arrested, charged with being a public nuisance, detained, and released on bail 10 days later. 

Yet Opoloje remains defiant. “Enough is enough,” she said. “If I lose anything, I’m willing to lose it if I can add a stone to the building of a better country of Uganda.”

This story was produced as part of a collaboration between AGORA and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)