An award-winning Ugandan creator who fled his nation after being charged with insulting President Yoweri Museveni has arrived in Germany together with this son to hunt medical therapy after being “tortured” in jail, based on his lawyer.
Eron Kiiza, the lawyer for Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, expressed “an enormous reduction” to the AFP information company on Wednesday, asserting his consumer’s arrival.
The novelist was jailed in December and later charged with “offensive communication” in a case that has raised worldwide concern.
The European Union was amongst these calling for a “complete investigation” into rights abuses in Uganda.
Rukirabashaija, 33, slipped out of Uganda two weeks in the past – after a court docket denied his utility to have his passport returned – forward of a legal trial that was on account of start on Wednesday.
He mentioned he was tortured in custody and appeared on tv earlier this month to disclose painful-looking welts crisscrossing his again and scars on different components of his physique.
Rukirabashaija, who was launched on bail final month, fled Uganda by strolling into neighbouring Rwanda throughout the hilly border after which travelled to a 3rd nation.
Following that, the United Nations Refugee Company facilitated his journey to Germany, based on Kiiza who declined to offer additional particulars.
Insulting Museveni
The costs towards Rukirabashaija relate to unflattering feedback on Twitter about Museveni, who has dominated Uganda since 1986, and his highly effective son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
In a single submit, he described Kainerugaba, a common who many Ugandans consider is positioning himself to take over from his 77-year-old father, as “overweight” and a “curmudgeon”.
The novelist beforehand advised AFP that he deliberate to return house after getting medical therapy.
“I’ve been identified with broken kidneys, bruised ribs and post-traumatic stress dysfunction,” he mentioned in a telephone interview from a secret location earlier this month.
He has described being crushed with batons, pressured to bop for hours at a time, attacked with pliers used to tear at his flesh and injected repeatedly with an unknown substance.
“I don’t know whether or not I used to be poisoned. I’m not feeling positive,” he mentioned.
‘Child despot’
Since he fled, Rukirabashaija has been tweeting relentlessly, even changing into embroiled in a Twitter spat with Kainerugaba whom he accused of being “in cost” of his torture and branding him a “child despot”.
Rights campaigners have known as for an investigation into his claims of torture and urged the authorities to drop all fees towards him.
“It’s insupportable that Ugandan safety forces are nonetheless torturing and ill-treating detainees,” Oryem Nyeko, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch, a world rights group, mentioned in an announcement earlier this month.
“As a substitute of prosecuting their critics over tweets, the Ugandan authorities must be investigating this and lots of different severe allegations of torture by state safety in recent times.”
Rukirabashaija advised the rights group that he was taken to see Kainerugaba throughout his detention and instructed to cease writing, however the common denied the declare.
“I don’t know who this younger boy is whom they are saying was crushed! I by no means heard of him till the media began speaking about him. I’ve by no means met him or talked to him and I’ve no want to take action,” Kainerugaba mentioned on Twitter.
Collection of crackdowns
Uganda has witnessed a sequence of crackdowns geared toward stamping out dissent, with journalists attacked, legal professionals jailed, election screens prosecuted and opposition leaders violently muzzled.
Activists have been repeatedly focused utilizing the strict Laptop Misuse Act which was used towards Rukirabashaija and which carries heavy penalties, together with jail time.
Outspoken Ugandan activist and author Stella Nyanzi, who fled to Germany earlier this 12 months, was imprisoned in 2019 beneath the identical legislation after posting a profane poem about Museveni.
Rukirabashaija received popularity of his 2020 satirical novel, The Grasping Barbarian, which describes high-level corruption in a fictional nation.
He has been repeatedly arrested for the reason that novel was revealed and mentioned he was beforehand tortured whereas being interrogated by army intelligence.
He was awarded the 2021 PEN Pinter Prize for an Worldwide Author of Braveness, which is introduced yearly to a author who has been persecuted for talking out about his beliefs, and PEN’s German department has campaigned in his assist.