Writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, whose trial for insulting President Yoweri Museveni and his son is scheduled for March, fled Uganda, where he considers himself threatened, and attacked his country’s justice system harshly . “He left Uganda”lawyer Eron Kiiza told AFP about Mr Rukirabashaija, 33. “He told me he was in Rwanda” then went ” in Europe “he added, referring to Germany.
On Twitter, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of President Yoweri Museveni and one of the targets of the writer critical of power, however affirmed that the latter was not in Rwanda. Relations between Kampala and Kigali, long tense, have recently warmed up, notably with the reopening of the border between the two countries.
Abroad, Mr. Rukirabashaija wishes, according to his lawyer, to treat the wounds inherited from his recent detention, during which he says he was tortured. “He fears being poisoned”especially after receiving “injections of unknown substances during his detention”. Arrested on December 28, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was charged on January 11 with “offensive communication” towards Mr. Museveni, in power since 1986, and towards General Kainerugaba. In a series of publications on Twitter, he had in particular described as“obese” and of “grouch” the latter, whom many see as the successor to his 77-year-old father.
“Pig’s head with glasses”
“I don’t know who this young man is who is said to have been beaten! I had never heard of him before the media started doing it” reacted the general on Twitter after the announcement of the departure of the writer. He added that the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, had just told him that the writer was not “not in Rwanda”. On Wednesday, February 9, in a tweet, Mr. Rukirabashaija on the contrary accused the son of the Head of State of having ” directed [sa] torment ».
The writer was released on bail on January 26, after being held in detention despite a court order ordering his release. On Monday, a senior Ugandan magistrate, Douglas Siniza, announced that he would be tried from March 23 and refused to relax the conditions imposed on his release, including the retention of his passport and the ban on speaking to the press.
On Facebook on Wednesday, the writer addressed the magistrate calling him a “pig’s head with glasses” : “You are a disgrace! » and “I will not appear before you again, dear ass licker of Museveni and Muhoozi”he wrote. “You allow anarchy. You had the power to respect my rights and set me free, rather than minimize my pleas against torture. These scammers have clearly made me an outcast in my own country”corn “I will not capitulate”he added.
Mr Rukirabashaija appeared in an interview on NTV Uganda television on Saturday, which showed his back streaked with apparently painful marks and scars on other parts of his body. “They beat me with truncheons everywhere”, he said. He added that he was forced to dance for days alongside other prisoners and was repeatedly forcibly injected with an unknown substance. He also described the use of pliers to tear off bits of flesh. “on the thighs, everywhere”. Before him, other Ugandan dissidents had also said they had been tortured with such tools.
A critically acclaimed novel
Recent years have been marked in Uganda by acts of repression against journalists, the imprisonment of lawyers and the muzzling of opposition leaders. On Monday, the European Union (EU) called for a “full investigation” about human rights violations in the country, expressing concern about “the significant increase in information on cases of torture, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, harassment and attacks against human rights defenders and members of the opposition” or environmental activists for over a year.
Ugandan activist and writer, Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned in 2017 and 2019 for posting believed statements online on trial “obscene” towards Mr. Museveni and his wife, also fled to Germany earlier this year. Mr Rukirabashaija published in 2020 The Greedy Barbarian (not translated into French), a satirical novel, acclaimed by critics, which describes an imaginary country plagued by corruption. In 2021, he received the PEN Pinter Prize, awarded each year to a persecuted author for having expressed his convictions.
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