A Ugandan university student who vanished two months ago after criticising President Yoweri Museveni on TikTok has been sentenced to two months in prison, fuelling outrage from human rights activists and opposition figures ahead of next year’s general election.
Elson Tumwine, a third-year student at Makerere University, disappeared on 8 June after posting a video that prosecutors said was intended “to ridicule, demean and incite hostility” towards the president.
The video reportedly mocked a recent apology Museveni made to the Baganda people, Uganda’s largest ethnic group.
Tumwine was working as an agricultural intern in Hoima, western Uganda, at the time of his disappearance.
His case gained national attention after the university issued a public appeal for information. Opposition figures later claimed he had been abducted and tortured by military intelligence agents before being “dumped” at a police station in Entebbe on 13 July.
Last week, Tumwine appeared in court and pleaded guilty to charges of offensive communication and computer misuse.
In his plea, he asked for forgiveness, and on Monday a magistrates’ court in Entebbe sentenced him to two months in prison, citing his admission and request for leniency.
Lawyer and activist Godwin Toko criticised the trial, claiming Tumwine refused legal representation and was likely coerced into pleading guilty.
“This is the apogee of injustice,” he wrote on social media. “Not his captors, but the victim himself is punished.”
The authorities have not responded to allegations of torture or illegal detention.
Tumwine’s sentencing follows a pattern of harsh punishments for online criticism of the president.
In November, a 21-year-old man was jailed for nearly three years over a video deemed insulting, while another student was sentenced to six years for “malicious” posts about Museveni’s family.
The cases have raised growing alarm over shrinking civic space and freedom of expression in Uganda.
