Rukirabashaija was launched from jail in late January after arrest associated to tweets about President Yoweri Museveni.
A Ugandan writer who had spent practically a month in jail after criticising President Yoweri Museveni has fled the nation, his lawyer has mentioned.
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, an internationally acclaimed author, was launched from jail in late January after being arrested in late December for communications offences associated to a collection of tweets he posted about Museveni and his son, a military basic.
Rukirabashaija fled Uganda throughout the land border with Rwanda and can settle not less than quickly in an unnamed European nation, Eron Kiiza advised The Related Press information company.
“Circumstances had change into inconceivable for him,” he mentioned of Rukirabashaija. “They saved surveilling him. They took away his passport. He had no possibility however to go and save his life.”
Police spokesman Fred Enanga mentioned he couldn’t touch upon Rukirabashaija’s matter because it was in court docket.
The novelist, who final 12 months gained the PEN Pinter Prize for worldwide writers of braveness, is best-known for “The Grasping Barbarian”, a novel about corruption in a fictional nation broadly interpreted as a satire on Museveni.
‘Plucked flesh’
Rukirabashaija alleged that he was tortured by officers whereas in detention, and pictures of his mutilated again shocked many within the East African nation.
“They began utilizing a pair of pliers and plucked flesh from my thighs and all over the place,” Rukirabashaija mentioned in an account to the native Each day Monitor newspaper.
“That day I believed I used to be dying and considered denouncing my Ugandan citizenship.”
Chief Justice of the Peace Douglas Singiza had refused to chill out Rukirabashaija’s bail circumstances, which included a maintain on his passport and an order to not communicate to journalists.
In a Fb publish on Wednesday, Rukirabashaija addressed Singiza as a “bespectacled pigheaded Justice of the Peace”, writing: “You’re a shame! Now, put my passport within the dock and take a look at it. I gained’t face you once more”.
Rukirabashaija was saved incommunicado for a lot of the time he was held in a detention facility, Kiiza mentioned beforehand, and solely appeared in court docket after widespread home and worldwide strain, together with from the USA and the European Union.
The European Union’s delegation to Uganda on Monday issued an announcement expressing concern over “a state of affairs that for greater than a 12 months has seen a big improve of stories of torture, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, harassment” and different assaults.
Final week the US cited “recurring credible accounts” of pressured disappearances and torture by the safety forces which “replicate poorly” on the federal government of President Yoweri Museveni, who has held energy since 1986.