Amnesty International has condemned the latest move by Ugandan Authorities to detain politician Bobi Wine.
In a statement on Tuesday, Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, Seif Magango, said the detention and remand of Ugandan opposition politician and musician Robert Kyagulanyi, commonly known as Bobi Wine, was a "shameless attempt by President Yowerio Museveni’s administration to silence dissent".
“The Ugandan authorities must immediately free Bobi Wine and stop misusing the law in a shameless attempt to silence him for criticising the government,” he said.
Magango added, “It is not a crime for Bobi Wine to hold a concert or organize a protest; it is a right enshrined in Ugandan and international law. The authorities must respect and uphold Bobi Wine’s right to liberty, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
The musician cum politician was summoned to the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) in Kampala on Monday to provide a statement on a concert he had planned to hold last week that was cancelled by the police.
On his way to the CID offices, he was violently ejected from his car, pushed into a police van and driven to Naggalama police station, some 38km northeast of Kampala.
Wine was then later returned to the capital and arraigned in the Buganda Road Court.
He was charged with holding an illegal assembly and procession in July last year when he led a street protest against Uganda's then newly-imposed social media tax.
The Kyadondo East MP is currently being held at the Luzira Maximum Security Prison until May 2, 2019 after being charged with disobedience of statutory duty, an offence he committed in July last year.
Wine was arraigned at Buganda Road Court in Kampala on Monday alongside his brother Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu, David Lulue and Edward Sebufu for holding an illegal protest against imposition of tax on social media networks.
He will return to court on Thursday for the mention of his case.
Police allegedly cancelled a press conference and concert he was due to hold in Kampala on April 22 and placed him under house arrest.
A video later circulated on social media where he had sang a song asking police why they were brutalising him yet he was not fighting them but the system.
In the video, Wine had said the war was meant to liberate entire Baganda, including the police.
But Museveni directed that Wine be prevented from holding any concert since September 2018 when he returned to Uganda from the US where he had gone for treatment for injuries sustained in military detention on alleged weapons possession charges which were later dropped in military court, but promptly replaced with terrorism charges – which he denied.
