By Black Star News
Photos: Video Screenshots
In Uganda, a university student who posted a TikTok criticizing President Yoweri Museveni has been imprisoned.
After the video posting, in June, Elson Tumwine had first mysteriously disappeared leading to an outcry by activists and opposition politicians that he had been abducted by government security agents.
Then, in mid-July he reappeared at Entebbe police station, before being charged with an offensive communication and computer misuse. He has since entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to two months in prison–because he reportedly ask for mercy.
In court, the third year student, at Makerere University, acknowledged posting the video. Prosecutors argued that Tumwine’s intent was to “ridicule, demean and incite hostility.” After the student’s June disappearance, Makerere University sent out an appeal asking the public for information about his whereabouts.
Two weeks ago, opposition NUP party official, David Lewis Rubongoya, said information was obtained that Tumwine, and another person, were at an Entebbe police station–and had been “dumped” there on July 13.
Lawyer Godwin Toko has criticized the trial of Tumwine.
“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,” Toko said.
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