By Emmanuel Mihiingo Kaija
In the unfolding political season in Uganda, the shadows are long and deep, and the stakes have rarely been higher. At the very beginning of this year, on 31 January 2025, Uganda’s Supreme Court ruled that military courts had no legal jurisdiction to try civilians, ordering all ongoing cases involving non-military personnel to be transferred back to ordinary civilian courts. That ruling seemed, for a brief moment, to mark a turning point: a reaffirmation of constitutionalism and a sign that even in an environment often marked by repression, there was still judicial space to protect citizens against military overreach. Yet within four months, that glimmer of judicial independence was dimmed when Parliament passed the UPDF (Amendment) Bill, 2025 on 20 May 2025, which reintroduced the authority of military courts to try civilians under vaguely defined “exceptional circumstances.” By June, the bill had been signed into law and promulgated, despite widespread alarm from civil society, the United Nations, and international rights groups. What this sequence reveals is the deliberate reshaping of legal frameworks to retain executive and military control in the heat of a campaign season, overriding judicial checks in a way that illustrates the shrinking democratic space.
The passage of this law cannot be read in isolation. It must be set against a broader factual pattern of repression stretching back through 2024 and into 2025, where large numbers of Ugandans—protesters, activists, journalists, and opposition supporters—faced arbitrary arrests, prolonged remands, and high-gravity charges. In July 2024, for example, more than 104 people were arrested during anti-corruption protests in Kampala, with many dragged into police cells and later charged under public-order statutes designed to criminalize dissent. That same month, 36 opposition supporters were arraigned on terrorism-related charges, an extraordinarily severe legal framing for what were essentially political activities. Beyond these headline cases, environmental defenders opposing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project were repeatedly detained, with at least 11 activists arrested in 2025 alone for peaceful protests. The media has not been spared either: human-rights monitors recorded more than 100 documented incidents of violations against journalists and media outlets in 2024, ranging from equipment confiscation to direct physical assault and detention. This catalogue of events is not incidental but forms part of a wider strategy where civic action is met with coercive policing, political dissent is met with criminalization, and information oversight is blunted by harassment of the press.
High-profile individual cases make these patterns concrete. The veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye was dramatically re-arrested after reportedly being taken from Nairobi in late 2024 and brought back to Uganda. By 21 February 2025, he was formally charged with treason—a capital offence—and has since been denied bail repeatedly, leaving him incarcerated for nearly a year as the campaign season begins. Similarly, the case of Eddie Mutwe, a close aide to Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine), exposed the brazenness of the security apparatus. Mutwe disappeared in late April 2025, and General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the Chief of Defence Forces, admitted openly that Mutwe was in his custody, even making combative social media posts about it. When Mutwe reappeared, reports noted signs of abuse, underscoring the climate of impunity. More recently, in October 2025, two Kenyan activists who had crossed into Uganda to attend an opposition campaign rally were abducted and remain unaccounted for, despite Kenyan authorities officially seeking an explanation. These three cases—Besigye, Mutwe, and the Kenyan activists—illustrate in personal and political terms how repression operates: through criminalization, enforced disappearance, and cross-border intimidation.
When these developments are analyzed together, a clear sequence emerges. The timing of the legal changes is critical. The Supreme Court’s January ruling, had it stood, would have constrained the state’s ability to use military courts as a weapon against political opponents. Parliament’s reversal by May, and the law’s enactment in June, indicates that the executive branch was unwilling to cede that legal tool in the months leading up to the January 2026 general elections. The motive is equally transparent: to preserve a climate of fear and to keep opposition campaigns structurally disadvantaged. A government that has maintained power for nearly four decades is unlikely to risk electoral uncertainty, and thus the fusion of law, policing, and intimidation serves as insurance. The mechanisms are diverse but reinforcing—legislation that legitimizes military trials of civilians, charges of treason and terrorism that carry heavy penalties, abductions and threats by security forces that silence opposition operatives, and harassment of media and civil society that denies the public an accurate picture of events.
The numbers reveal just how systematic this erosion of space has become. Over 100 incidents against journalists in 2024 point to sustained assault on free information. More than 140 combined arrests and terrorism charges from protest-related incidents in mid-2024 show the willingness to use sweeping arrests as a deterrent. The Supreme Court ruling in January and its legislative override within four months demonstrate that not even constitutional guardianship is beyond political circumvention. These are not stray episodes but measurable trends of democratic backsliding. And while rights groups, the United Nations, and international partners have condemned the developments, their statements—though firm—have so far had little practical effect in reversing the trajectory.
The implications for Uganda’s January 2026 elections are sobering. A campaign season marred by the threat of abductions, prolonged detentions, and treason charges creates an environment where opposition organizing is not merely difficult but potentially life-threatening. The presence of military courts as an active threat means that activists can be whisked into opaque trials with limited civilian oversight. Journalists covering such events face harassment, reducing the information available to voters. In effect, the contest risks being decided not only in the ballot box but in the police cell, the courtroom, and the barracks. The ability of citizens to cast their votes freely, with access to diverse political voices, is severely compromised when fear permeates the political landscape.
In conclusion, the record of the past twenty-one months makes clear that Uganda has entered this electoral season not from a place of openness and democratic competition but under a dense fog of suppression. The sequence from court ruling to legislative reversal, the documented hundreds of arrests and charges, the systematic attacks on the media, and the high-profile intimidation of opposition leaders and their aides form a coherent and evidence-based narrative of state strategy. What remains uncertain is whether domestic civil society, regional partners, and international actors can mobilize sufficient pressure to mitigate these measures, or whether Uganda will move into January 2026 with the outcome already tilted not by the will of the people, but by the machinery of repression.
References
Associated Press. (2025, February 21). Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye is charged with treason. Retrieved from https://apnews.com
Human Rights Watch. (2025, May 22). Uganda: Bill allows military trials of civilians. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org
Reporters Without Borders. (2024). Press freedom violations in Uganda: Annual report. Retrieved from https://rsf.org
Reuters. (2024, July). Ugandan police say 104 people were arrested in anti-corruption protests. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com
Reuters. (2025, January 31). Uganda’s top court bans military prosecution of civilians. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com
Reuters. (2025, May 2). Uganda’s military chief says missing opposition official is ‘in my basement’. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com
Reuters. (2025, June 16). Uganda leader signs law reintroducing military trials of civilians. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com
The Guardian. (2025, October 2). Kenyan activists abducted after joining opposition rally in Uganda. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com
