Event Summary
In the lead-up to Uganda’s January 2026 general elections, where President Yoweri Museveni is seeking a seventh term, Ugandan security forces have intensified crackdowns on opposition figures and their associates. A notable incident involved the abduction and secret detention of two Kenyan human rights activists, Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, who were in Uganda to support opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) of the National Unity Platform (NUP). News outlets reported seeing them forced into a car by masked men in uniforms after attending a political event.
This event highlights broader patterns of transnational political repression in East Africa, including similar abductions in Tanzania earlier in 2025, amid rising concerns over democratic backsliding ahead of elections in Uganda in January 2026, and Kenya in 2027, and the region’s recent polls in Tanzania in October 2025. The activists were held incommunicado for 38 days without formal charges or court appearances and were detained in Uganda’s notorious “fridge” military cells where they endured torture before their release on November 8 amid diplomatic pressure. The incident mirrors past disappearances of opposition supporters across the region and is intertwined with a surge in domestic arrests of National Unity Platform supporters, with at least 500 arrested since November 2024. Fears of escalating pre-election violence have further been intensified by a major crackdown in Mbarara on November 7, where over 60 NUP supporters were arrested, beaten, and held incommunicado under brutal conditions. The Mbarara incident, occurring just days after Museveni’s comments about holding Kenyan activists in a fridge, exemplifies the regime’s strategy to dismantle opposition voices and dissent through mass detentions, beatings, and fabricated charges.
These events have severely degraded Uganda’s enabling environment for civil society by instilling fear among human rights defenders and activists, forcing self-censorship and trauma that leaves activists withdrawn from activism. CSOs that provide legal aid had to divert resources to emergency legal aid amid lawyer harassment. The events also disrupt key CSO activities like voter education, risking a silent democratic collapse ahead of the January 2026 elections.