Uganda’s post-electoral crackdown on the opposition has witnessed something of an escalation in the recent weeks, according to the latest Human Rights Watch report released on Thursday, chronicling a litany of arrests and detentions.
HRW says the authorities have intensified attacks on the main opposition National Unity Platform party since presidential elections of January 15, 2026.
At least 118 NUP supporters currently face election-related offence charges, including unlawful assembly and conspiracy.
The leader of the NUP, Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, who is still in hiding has alleged continued harrassment of his family including his wife who was allegedly manhandled by security officers at their home in Kampala.
HRW said NUP supporters have been rounded up amid reports that two of its senior leaders are missing.
Since January 15, the military has put Wine’s home under siege to the home, restricting access to and from the premises.
Wine has been President Yoweri Museveni’s main chalenger at the polls, polling 24. 72 percent of the vote, behind the 81-year-old incumbent who polled 71.65 percent. Wine and his followers have rejected the results as a fraudulent.
“Uganda’s longstanding pattern of abuse against opposition has risen to alarming levels,” said Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Ugandan government needs to stop cracking down on dissent and ensure that people with opposing views are safe.”
On January 16, Kyagulanyi revealed that he had escaped his home after soldiers raided his compound and switched off electricity and CCTV cameras. Since then he has been in hiding.
Kyagulanyi has also given graphic details of harassment of his family, posting photos on his X account of the alleged damage to his property while a video by his wife, Barbara Kyagulanyi purportedly shows the moment six security personnel invaded their home, carrying weapons.
Wine’s wife later claimed to the media that the men had grabbed her by her hair, tore her clothing, sat on her, and demanded that she open her phone, which she refused.
All of this comes as President Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the head of the Ugandan military threatened to end Kyagulanyi’s life, boasting on X recently that the government had already killed 22 NUP “terrorists,”.
He allegedly hoped that ”the 23rd is Kabobi [Bobi Wine]” but denied that his soldiers had assaulted Kyagulanyi’s wife.
Another NUP leader detained is Jolly Jackline Tukamushaba, the deputy president for Western Uganda who was arrested by seven armed men in military uniforms raiding the hotel room where she and her daughter were staying, holding them at gunpoint.
Also taken away is the party’s deputy president for Northern Uganda, Lina Zedriga Waru, from her home on the outskirts of Kampala.
HRW quotes her son, Frank John Bosco Lemi as saying around 6 p.m. on January 15, neighbours alerted him that something was wrong and that Zedriga had been taken away by soldiers in two vehicles belonging to the military.
He said he reviewed security footage showing eight soldiers in two vehicles taking her away. Lemi also said that the following day, the soldiers came back to their home, without his mother. He escaped when they entered the house.
At a January 23 court hearing, which was held after Lemi petitioned the High Court in Kampala on his mother’s behalf, the military denied holding her. The matter was adjourned to January 28, pending a response from the police.
n the run up to the 2026 elections, opposition rallies wre violently disrupted and arrests made targeting, opposition supporters and journalists covering the campaigns. Also arrested were human rights activists.
At least 10 nongovernmental organisations were also indenifently suspended on vague and unsubstantiated grounds, according to HRW.
There was also a blanket internet shutdown two days before the election, severely restricting access to critical information about the elections.
WN/as/APA