Ugandans who criticized President Yoweri Museveni and his son, the country’s military chief, on social media say strangers lured them into traps, armed men forced them into vans and they were beaten and held, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.
The accounts come from an activist charged over a SIM card, a journalist who says officers stripped him and photographed him naked, and a father who says he still doesn’t know where his 17-year-old son is. None of them could be independently verified. The army says it acts within the law.
Praise Aloikin Opoloje, a 27-year-old lawyer and activist, was detained on Sept. 26 after posting a video in which she said she wasn’t afraid of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the chief of defense forces. Two days later, at the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court, she was charged with using another person’s SIM card, one registered in her mother’s name, to carry out illegal activity under Regulation 29 of the 2024 Regulation of Interception of Communications Regulations. She denied the charge.
Ms. Opoloje said she was drawn to a Kampala police station by a false accusation that she had stolen a carpet. Six men then pushed her into a Toyota HiAce van, the kind Ugandans call a “drone,” she said. One of them told her, “We are going to show you what we do to people who insult our president,” according to her account.
She said the men beat her, threatened to rape her and drove toward Entebbe before a phone call sent them back to Kampala Central Police Station. Police have said she was arrested, not abducted, UG Bulletin reported. She later told Pulse Uganda that operatives questioning her about comments aimed at General Muhoozi tried to recruit her into the Patriotic League of Uganda.
Al Jazeera interviewed her in the visitors’ room at Luzira Women’s Prison, where she arrived in an oversized yellow-and-black striped dress, smiling. Asked whether she would stop speaking out, she said: “Me? Never. In fact, when I get out, if I do, I will start from where I stopped.” She said prison was better than the basement she believed the men had been taking her to.
A magistrate, Winnie Nankya Jatiko, granted her bail on Oct. 14 after 16 days on remand, setting a non-cash bond of 500,000 shillings and ordering her to surrender her passport, the Daily Monitor reported. She needs the court’s permission to leave the country. The charge stands.
“I don’t think my mother or my three-year-old daughter should pay the price for my actions,” she said. She said men had told her mother they knew where she lived.
Emmanuel Baliza, 59, said a stranger lured him away from home with a story about land. About six men in military uniforms and face coverings were waiting in a HiAce van, searched his phone and then took his son, William, who had said he wanted to protest police brutality and the education system. The men said they were taking the boy to the Special Investigations Unit but gave no reference number, Mr. Baliza said. He has heard William may be held at a military facility in Kasenyi, near Entebbe. Officials deny holding him.
William had posted on TikTok, “Uganda is bleeding,” his sister told their father.
Andrew Tabandama Natumanya, a journalist and rights activist, posted live updates on X in May as officers searched properties linked to Anita Among, then the speaker of Parliament, in an inquiry into allegations that included corruption and money laundering. Ms. Among was put under house arrest. Mr. Museveni later ordered her released, and the state dropped plans to charge her.
Mr. Natumanya said armed men seized him at a washing bay on June 17, held his head under an officer’s foot, stripped him and took pictures. “Not even a pair of socks was on my body,” he said. They warned him that if he kept posting, “you will also see these things on the internet.” He was held five days and released on bail. “I will not delete my (posts),” he said. “I will change tactics, but continue stating facts.”
Steven Atukwatse, a lawyer with the Agora Research Center, said he had handled 12 cases since November 2025 of social media users charged under the Computer Misuse Act, most of them on TikTok and X. “Most are arrested for either criticising Museveni or his son, Muhoozi,” he said. “They disappear, then a few months later they are dumped at police stations.” Charges are often left pending with no formal withdrawal, he said, “which means you may be out but not completely free.”
Uganda’s Constitutional Court has struck down that law, finding that its 2022 amendment and parts of the 2011 original were passed without a lawful quorum, the Daily Monitor reported. How many people have been detained remains unclear.
Col. Chris Magezi, an army spokesman, said accusations of unlawful conduct needed evidence and that security agencies monitor social media. “The rest is political and not necessarily people being disappeared,” he said. “If they disappear, they appear in court.”
Mr. Baliza is still waiting for that. “I do not know where my son is,” he said.