Novelist Kakwenza flees Uganda to exile

By Our reporter

10^th Feb 2022

A USA-based Ugandan journalist Remmy Bahati has confirmed that a government critic Kakwenza Rukirabashaija reached USA.

According to Bahati, Kakwenza will feature on a program dubbed Diaspora Open Space Conversations to narrate his ordeal following days in detention in Uganda where he alleges, he was subjected to torture and inhumane acts.

Kakwenza reportedly fled from the country for exile according to his lawyers Eron Kizza and Samuel Wanda. On Wednesday February 9^th 2022, they indicated that Kakwenza will fly from Kigali International Airport in Rwanda to another African Country where he will spend three days and then fly to Europe.

However, the Commander of Land Forces Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba in a tweet later dismissed the reports, stating that he had held a conversation with the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame who confirmed that Kakwenza “was not in Rwanda”.

The novelist also posted on social media that indicating he could be in Malawi.

Kakwenza was arrested on  December 28, 2021, from his home in Kisaasi, a Kampala suburb, and held incommunicado until January 11, 2022, when he was produced in court on two cases of offensive communication.

According to the Prosecutors, Kakwenza used his Twitter handle @KakwenzaRukira to post a series of tweets about President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and his son Lt General Muhoozi Kainerugaba with no purpose of legitimate communication. In one of the tweets, Kakwenza refers to the President as an election thief and in another, he calls Muhoozi overweight and intellectually bankrupt.

The prosecutors argue that the communication was willfully and repeatedly used to disturb the peace of the president. He denied the charges.

He was later granted a cash bail of 500,000 Shillings. On Monday, the Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court rejected Kakwenza’s request to have his passport returned to enable him to attend an event in Germany where he was to be recognized as an Honorary Member of Pen International.

Court presided over by the Chief Magistrate Dr. Douglas Singiza said that the award which Kakwenza wanted to go and pick from Germany as the reason to get back his passport can be presented to him online.

After his release, Kakwenza said that he was tortured by state operatives who injected him with substances in his feet and hands six times every six hours, being denied sleep, and made to dance with a jerrican full of water.

On Monday February 7^th 2022, the European Union-EU Delegation in Uganda called for a comprehensive investigation into the persistent torture cases and other human rights violations in the country.