‘Abducted’ Ugandan university student jailed over anti-Museveni TikTok video

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 8 June – 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 13 July.

He alleged they were taken there after being subjected to “incredible torture” at the hands of the country’s military intelligence unit.

The authorities have not commented on these allegations.

Criticising the trial, lawyer and activist Godwin Toko said Tumwine had refused to let lawyers from his organisation or those from the opposition represent him in court.

“For a man who was abducted, held incommunicado for months, nudged to plead guilty and then sentenced, this is the apogee of injustice that it is not his captor punished, but him getting a criminal record to his name at such a young age,” he posted on X on Tuesday.

Last November, 21-year-old Emmanuel Nabugodi was jailed for 32 months after creating a video said to insult Museveni.

Months earlier, Edward Awebwa, 24, was sentenced to six years in prison for hate speech and spreading “malicious” information against the first family.