By benadeta mwaura - Reporter
Uganda, January 26 2026 - Authorities in Uganda have lifted a social media ban imposed during the January 15 presidential election period, but the country remains mired in a deep political and human rights crisis marked by widespread arrests, violent clashes and shocking allegations against security forces.
Uganda implemented sweeping restrictions on internet and social media platforms around the election, including temporary blockages of Facebook-owned apps and WhatsApp, ostensibly to curb misinformation.
While basic internet access has been restored, access to key apps and messaging services remained curtailed for days, forcing citizens to turn to VPNs to communicate and share information during the peak of the voting process.
Critics said the shutdown undermined transparency and civil liberties at a critical juncture. President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986 and declared winner with roughly 71.6 percent of the vote, faces strong opposition from Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine, who took about 24.7 percent and rejected the results as fraudulent.
Opposition and rights groups say the election was marred by internet blackouts, intimidation, ballot irregularities and suppression of dissent. In the weeks following the vote, the military chief, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is also Museveni’s son, announced that about 2,000 supporters of Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP) have been detained and that 30 people have been killed in post-election clashes, though government accounts label those detained as “terrorists” and “hooligans.” Rights groups and the UN Secretary-General António Guterres have expressed alarm at the breadth of arrests and alleged abuses.
The crisis took a dramatic and disturbing turn on January 24, 2026, when Bobi Wine’s wife, Barbara Kyagulanyi, was hospitalised after an alleged assault by soldiers who raided the family home in the Magere suburb of Kampala. According to Bobi Wine’s account on social media, security forces held her at gunpoint, strangled her, insulted her, forced her to refuse unlocking her phone, and left her with injuries requiring medical treatment at a local hospital, an incident that has drawn widespread condemnation.
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Eyewitness descriptions and multiple reports describe the raid as involving hundreds of heavily armed personnel, breaking down doors, looting electronic devices and searching for Wine, who has been in hiding since security forces intensified efforts to arrest him.
Civil liberties organisations, legal representatives and international observers have denounced both the crackdown and the assault on Barbara Kyagulanyi as part of a broader pattern of political repression designed to intimidate the opposition and stifle dissent.
The Uganda Law Society has said it intends to seek court orders to lift restrictions imposed on Wine and to challenge unlawful detentions. Wine’s supporters and some opposition MPs have also faced detention or disappearance amid heightened security operations in multiple regions, a sign that the post-election environment has moved well beyond normal political rivalry into systematised suppression of alternative political voices.
The lifting of the social media ban comes at a moment when digital freedoms, political space and civil rights remain under intense pressure in Uganda. The combination of internet restrictions, mass detentions, reported lethal force against protesters and the assault on an opposition figure’s family member have drawn both domestic outcry and international scrutiny, underscoring a widening gap between official narratives of stability and on-the-ground reports of repression and violence.
