Ever since President Yoweri Museveni's personal guards beat up and almost killed the popular musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine on 14 August the normally effective mixture of security force brutality and mass detentions has failed to quell growing protest...
Ever since President Yoweri Museveni's personal guards beat up and almost killed the popular musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine on 14 August the normally effective mixture of security force brutality and mass detentions has failed to quell growing protest...
What began as popular outrage at the treatment of Bobi Wine in detention including savage beatings and torture has become a general protest against the impunity of Museveni his family the security forces and their arbitrary exercise of power...
A private member's bill to raise the limit caused a furore two years ago and when legislation came to parliament in September last year passing eventually troops were sent into the parliamentary chamber after fisticuffs broke out among the MPs among them Bobi Wine...
Bobi Wine's diffuse 'People Power' movement might have eventually faded away had it not been for Museveni's personal order – so Kampala sources report – to have him 'disciplined' after he went to the north-western border town of Arua to hold an election meeting on 13 August...
Members of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) were challenging the ruling National Resistence Movement (NRM) for the seat but it was Kasiano Wadri an ex-MP backed as an independent by Bobi Wine who was victorious in the poll...
Hotel attackSoldiers with the elite Special Forces Command (SFC – the new name for the Presidential Guard) of which Museveni's son Major General Muhoozi Kainerugaba has been commander descended on the hotel where Bobi Wine and other opposition politicians were staying breaking down doors firing their weapons and beating Bobi Wine and others with metal bars...
Witnesses say Bobi Wine's driver Yasin Kawuma was shot dead...
Bobi Wine's whereabouts were unknown for 72 hours...
He may have been provoked sources say by stones hitting one of the cars in his convoy or possibly by the sheer size of the crowds that have been greeting Bobi Wine at his rallies and concerts...
When it appeared that Bobi Wine and another critically battered MP Francis Zaake might die in custody they were hurriedly treated – Bobi Wine by army doctors – before being released...
Bobi Wine is among 33 who have been charged with treason...
The treason charges and a hastily released picture of guns supposedly recovered from Bobi Wine's hotel did not do the trick...
Public pressure –especially from international coverage of the affair – forced the army on Museveni's orders to suspend the court martial of Bobi Wine and allow him to leave the country...
In a meeting with NRM MPs after the Bobi Wine controversy started – after which Speaker of the House Rebecca Kadaga wrote to him asking him to explain the torture allegations – he reportedly said he could even abolish Parliament if he wanted to...