1 Apr 2025 | Africa, News and features, Uganda
In recent months, several young men and women in Uganda have been arrested and charged for views they expressed on TikTok.
In the East African country, the freedom of expression landscape has deteriorated to the extent that one cannot hold a placard and march anywhere in support of a cause or in protest against an injustice. You will be roughed up by the Uganda Police Force, bundled into a police van, locked up in a cell and charged with the colonial-era “common nuisance” offence that the government uses to crush demonstrations.
Consequently, people with critical views turn to social media platforms like TikTok and X. Facebook is not available in Uganda – it was banned in January 2021 after the platform pulled down hundreds of pages that were linked to the government and thought to be fake. Facebook said that it acted after an investigation showed the accounts were attempting to influence the January 2021 presidential elections in favour of the incumbent, Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since January 1986.
But even on TikTok or X, which are still allowed in the country, there is the likelihood that you will be arrested for expressing views considered offensive (particularly towards members of the first family – the family of the president) or deemed hateful (usually to members of Museveni’s sub-tribe or tribe, Banyankole, who hold many top positions across multiple sectors in the country).
Those recently arrested and charged include 21-year-old David Ssengozi (alias Lucky Choice), 28-year-old Isaiah Ssekagiri and 19-year-old Julius Tayebwa, all charged in November 2024 with hate speech and spreading malicious information against the first family. They are now awaiting trial.
There are more, although reporting is sparse. Instead, TikTokers themselves cover each other’s cases. Agora Discourse, a platform holding the Ugandan authorities to account, gave Index a list of those who have been charged. They include 26-year-old Muganga Fred, 19-year-old Wasswa Noah (alias Sturbon Josh) and Passy Mbabazi, a member of the National Unity Platform (NUP), the leading opposition party in the country, all charged with hate speech against either Museveni, his family or party members.
Except for Mbabazi’s case, which is ongoing at Bushenyi Magistrate’s Court, Western Uganda, the rest of the cases are being tried at Entebbe Chief Magistrates’ Court in Central Uganda, under one magistrate, Stella Maris Amabilis, who has already found two TikTokers guilty as charged and sentenced them to jail terms.
One of these is 21-year-old Emmanuel Nabugodi, who received a 32-month sentence on 18 November 2024 for hate speech and spreading malicious information about President Museveni for a comedy video in which he held a mock trial of the long-ruling soldier and politician, whom he found guilty and sentenced to a public flogging.
The other is 24-year-old Edward Awebwa, who received a six-year jail term for demeaning President Museveni, his wife Janet Museveni and his son General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. These two convictions make Amabilis, the magistrate, predictable – it is likely that the rest of the TikTokers being tried by her will be found guilty as well.
At least three patterns arise from the above arrests and charges (and, in two occasions, prison sentences). First, Museveni and his family members are the offended parties – the untouchables against whom nobody dares raise a voice. This makes the charges politically motivated with their sole aim being to crush dissent.
Second, the commonly preferred charges are hate speech and spreading malicious information about the people in the ruling party, under the notorious Computer Misuse Act (as amended in 2022).
Finally, most of those being criminally prosecuted are young people, mainly in their twenties.
It is nothing new for critical voices posting online to suffer prosecution in Uganda. Take Stella Nyanzi, an academic, poet and politician, and Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, a novelist, memoirist and lawyer. The former was jailed in 2019 for 18 months for writing a poem on Facebook suggesting that Museveni should have died at childbirth to save Uganda from tyranny. The latter was kidnapped, detained and has described how he was tortured in December 2022, when he wrote on Twitter (now X) that Museveni’s son Kainerugaba was “obese” and a “curmudgeon” and that the Musevenis had “imposed enormous suffering on this country [Uganda]”.
These arrests and prosecutions usually target voices critical of the ruling party. The people who use their social media accounts to express views critical of opposition politicians do not face arrest or prosecution.
According to Godwin Toko, a lawyer and human rights activist, and a member of the Network of Public Interest Lawyers (NETPIL), the crackdown on TikTokers is meant to entrench a culture of silence, unaccountability and untouchability by instilling fear in Ugandans so that they do not participate in public debates that call for better governance.
“Generally, freedom of expression is the bedrock for other freedoms. Without it, other freedoms are hard to guarantee. This has greatly impacted our democracy as people aren’t able to hold leaders accountable,” Toko told Index, calling on Ugandans to “boldly, fearlessly and persistently hold their leaders accountable by using any means necessary to safeguard and further freedom of expression”.
Toko is one of the founding members of Agora, a digital public square spotlighting mismanagement of public resources, be it roads that are potholed, hospitals that are not adequately staffed and stocked, or public institutions, like Parliament, that are corrupt.
The platform was founded after it became impossible for Ugandans to hold peaceful protests after the Public Order Management Act came into force in 2013. The Uganda Police Force has been criticised for misinterpreting the law and shutting down any form of demonstration, as shown by how brutally they arrest anybody who attempts to hold a placard in support of a cause or in castigation of an injustice.
But members loyal to the ruling party are allowed to hold demonstrations of any kind, whenever they wish to. These double standards common among Uganda’s ruling elite are what make TikTokers and freedom of expression activists loud in their condemnation of Museveni, his family members, and his ardent lieutenants.
Unfortunately, this comes at a heavy cost – brutal arrests, drawn-out judicial trials and potentially long prison sentences – to which jailed TikTokers Nabugodi and Awebwa, among others, can attest.
31 Mar 2025 | About Index, Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, Europe and Central Asia, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, News and features, Newsletters, Russia, United States
I have a recurring nightmare: I somehow find myself in China. I’m having a great time until I realise I work at Index, might be on a blacklist, and could get arrested at any moment. When I tell my nightmare to people who work in the China human rights space they always reply with the same reassurance: “It would never come to that – you’d simply be denied a visa to begin with or turned away at the border.” After all, such has been the case for several people in our field, most notably Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch and Aleksandra Bielakowska from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – both sent back on a plane from Hong Kong airport before setting foot in the territory.
This isn’t a China story; it’s a global one. In the article Be nice, or you’re not coming in, which featured in the Spring 2024 edition of our magazine, Salil Tripathi wrote about how critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were being denied entry to the country. Penny Vera-Sanso of Birkbeck University in London, Lindsay Bremner from University of Westminster and University of Sussex’s Filippo Osella – all three were turned away upon arrival. Georgia has also perfected the art of entry denial. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, scores of independent Russian journalists weren’t allowed in, no reason given. The same happened recently to Lithuanian women’s rights advocate Regina Jegorova-Askerova, who was stopped at the border despite Georgia being her home for the past 15 years and her having family there.
Is the USA joining the club? Last week, a French scientist was denied entry to the country. The French government claims it’s because of his criticism of Donald Trump. The US government says it’s instead because he was carrying confidential information on an electronic device, which violated a non-disclosure agreement. A week before this, several members of the British punk band U.K. Subs were turned back at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Bassist Alvin Gibbs wondered whether this was because of his public criticisms of Trump or whether that theory was just paranoia. Perhaps we are all jumping to the worst conclusions, but inciting paranoia can be intentional – and it’s certainly infectious. In the past few days, several people have spoken to me about whether they should delete their messaging apps and social media profiles before travelling to the USA, or, for those already there, whether it’s wise to leave, fearing they won’t be allowed back in.
Hong Kong, Georgia, India, the USA – places once regarded as relatively liberal – are now part of a troubling trend where dissenters are kept out with the stroke of a pen. This is the new reality: autocrats share tactics, and the freedom to travel is becoming a privilege, not a right.
28 Mar 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, India, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, Russia, Turkey, United States
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we look at the detention of an Oscar Award-winning documentary maker and a poorly-monitored Signal group chat.
Attacks on investigative journalism: The assault and detention of Hamdan Ballal
On Monday 24 March, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist and co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, announced on X that his fellow co-director Hamdan Ballal had been assaulted by Israeli settlers, and was subsequently taken from an ambulance by Israeli soldiers and detained. Ballal is a Palestinian filmmaker from Susya in the occupied West Bank. He was released on Tuesday 25 March. In an interview with The Guardian, Ballal said that the attack was “revenge” for the creation of No Other Land, which explores Israeli soldiers’ destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets. The documentary was created by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists and filmmakers, with particular focus on the positive alliance developed between Abraham and a Palestinian activist called Basel Adra. This collaborative effort has proved controversial in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and Ballal recounted being physically attacked and beaten by both settlers and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. His lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said Ballal didn’t receive adequate medical care for his injuries in detention, and that she had no access to him for several hours after his arrest. Ballal’s treatment represents a significant attack on investigative journalism, and follows a string of free expression violations in Israel and the occupied West Bank, including restrictions on journalists and the censorship of cultural products depicting Palestinian-Israeli relations.
National security breaches: US war plans leaked via Signal group chat
This week saw a most remarkable story come out of the USA; on 11 March, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the magazine The Atlantic, was accidentally (and rather carelessly) added to a top secret group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal where senior US Cabinet members were discussing plans for attacks on Houthi targets across Yemen. Chat members included US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, among other chief members of the Donald Trump administration. At first sceptical of the “Houthi PC small group” chat’s legitimacy, Goldberg realised it was definitely real after attacks discussed in the chat were carried out a few hours later. To hold such crucial discussions via a messaging app, then to mistakenly add a journalist to said discussions, constitutes a monumental breach in American national security. Both Hegseth and US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz have faced great scrutiny for this major mishap. Meanwhile, Goldberg has faced backlash from the highest echelons of the US government, with Trump himself attempting to lead a smear campaign against the journalist.
Film censorship: Globally-acclaimed film Santosh banned in India
With Hamdan Ballal bearing the brunt of the backlash to his co-directed documentary in the West Bank, there are other reports of film censorship coming out of India. Santosh, a film created by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, has received international plaudits for its depiction of corruption and bigotry eminent in the Indian police force. Yet it was this very portrayal that has seen it banned from being screened in India. The film – which features an all-Indian cast and is filmed completely in the Hindi language – debuted at Cannes film festival and was nominated for both a Bafta and an Oscar. But its depictions of misogyny, caste-based violence and prejudice, institutional Islamophobia and brutality in the police force mean it may never see the light of day in the country of its setting.
Protest crackdowns: BBC correspondent deported from Turkey
Following the arrest and detention of Istanbul mayor and presidential political rival Ekrem Imamoglu, protests erupted across major cities in Turkey. Clashes between demonstrators and riot police reportedly saw more than a thousand people detained between 19 and 23 March. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has cracked down on the protests – and seemingly, their coverage as well. BBC correspondent Mark Lowen, who had been in the country reporting on the demonstrations for several days, was taken from his hotel by Turkish authorities on 26 March, according to the BBC, then deported back to the UK on 27 March. The authorities claimed that Lowen was “being a threat to public order”. Imamoglu is seen as Erdoğan’s main rival for the 2028 presidential election, and similarly to how many see his arrest as an attempt to remove political opposition, the deportation of a journalist could be seen as an attempt to obscure the truth.
Political prisoners: Russian anti-war activist’s prison sentence extended
Maria Ponomarenko is a Siberian activist and journalist who was jailed in 2023 for reporting on the Russian bombing of a theatre in Mariupol, southern Ukraine. The Kremlin denied any involvement in the attack, thought to have killed hundreds of civilians, despite multiple eyewitness reports. Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in prison after her journalism was deemed to be “fake news”. Now, her sentence has been extended by one year and ten months because she allegedly attacked two prison guards, a charge that Amnesty International has described as “spurious” and which the human rights group claims is an attempt to further silence and repress her. Ponomarenko has reportedly launched a hunger strike while in prison to demand better treatment and justice for her false charges.
28 Mar 2025 | Belarus, Egypt, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Russia
On Sunday 30 March, I and mothers like me across the UK, will be waking up to a chorus of “Happy Mother’s Day!”, handmade cards and flowers thrust in our faces as we curse whoever made the decision to put the clocks forward on today of all days.
As anyone who is a mother knows, it’s a hard job. The balancing of family life, careers and – dare I say it – our own social lives; the emotional and mental load that falls to us; attempting to raise tiny people into well-rounded grown-up humans.
Mother’s Day is an opportunity to recognise all this, in ourselves and in our own mothers. But this Mother’s Day, I’d like to think about those who are mothering in extreme situations. Those who are fighting for the release of their children, who are held in prison in autocratic regimes after raising their voices. Those who are campaigning for the release of partners, after they stood up to autocrats. And those who are behind bars themselves after speaking out, and have been ripped away from their families.
One of those mothers is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president against Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 2020 in Belarus. She is now in exile in Lithuania, where she leads the opposition coalition.
Tsikhanouskaya never wanted to be a politician. She describes herself as having been an “ordinary woman”, where her family was her world. The change of course was thrust upon her when her husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who was a willing opposition leader, was arrested in May 2020 then sentenced to 18 years in prison in December 2021.
With her husband incommunicado, Tsikhanouskaya has led the campaign for his release, taken up his political reins and continued to raise their two children.
On Belarus Freedom Day (25 March), just a few days before Mother’s Day, Lukashenka chose the national awareness day to be sworn in after his sham election. Meanwhile, Index on Censorship organised a protest outside the Belarusian embassy in London, writing the names of political prisoners in chalk on the pavement. Meanwhile, Tsikhanouskaya continued to raise the issue of Belarusian freedom on the international stage. From her office in Lithuania, she took time out to talk to me about what happens when the worlds of motherhood and campaigning collide.
“Raising children is a heavy duty, even if you’re an ordinary person,” she told me. And for her, there is an additional toll.
“You always live with the feeling of guilt, because you are not spending enough time with the children,” she said. A relatable feeling. “Very unexpectedly for them, I became […] the person who is defending their daddy, who is defending the country, the leader that had to travel a lot just to raise the alarm about the situation in Belarus.”
She tries to pack in time with her children when she can, but is conscious of not overwhelming them.
“All these years, we are also living with the pain,” she said. Her daughter was only four when her father was imprisoned, and Tsikhanouskaya does everything she can to make sure she remembers his voice and what he looks like. Her daughter writes letters, but they go unanswered.
“It’s very painful for her, and she’s asking, ‘Mum, maybe he is not alive anymore, and you are lying to us, or maybe he doesn’t love us anymore’,” she said.
Tsikhanouskaya is forced to have conversations with her children that no mother would ever want to conduct, about brutality and torture in prisons. Meanwhile her son, who is older, tries not to ask painful questions. He doesn’t want to write letters to his father, because he doesn’t want to flaunt his own freedom.
“I hope, I really believe that they’re learning a lot from these difficult lives. They’re learning how people can sacrifice their lives, their freedoms, a comfortable life, just for something bigger and more important,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
Beyond this, she said she feels the Belarusian people are learning something – that women can lead movements. This, she said, is not the message that was left to them from their Soviet Union past. Meanwhile, she is nourished by the Belarusian people, and by international communities.
This Mother’s Day, Tsikhanouskaya has a message for other mothers fighting similar battles: “Don’t even dare blame yourself that you are a bad mother because you have to be a good leader of your campaign. Your example is the best lesson your children can learn.”
She spares a thought too for the mothers who are political prisoners themselves, and describes how this tactic of separating mothers from their children is “like they cut a piece of your life”.
One of those women is Antanina Kanavalava, a member of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign, who was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for preparing to take part in a mass riot, related to her role in running a Telegram channel. Her husband was also detained for the same reason, leaving behind their son and daughter, who are both under the age of eight and were taken abroad by their grandmother.
“Dictators know that children are the most effective leverage,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
In fact, Tsikhanouskaya herself had her children used against her. She was told to leave the country, and was threatened with prison if she refused.
She said that she was told: “Your husband’s already in prison. Your children will be in an orphanage.”
The winner of the Trustees Award at our Freedom of Expression Awards in 2024 also knows what it means to campaign for your husband’s release while continuing to raise children. Russian human rights activist Evgenia Kara-Murza, the advocacy director of the Free Russia Foundation, continued to raise her three children while she took up the campaign to fight for her husband’s release.
Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested and jailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2022, after he’d already been poisoned twice. His wife spent the next two years travelling the world and speaking out against her husband’s imprisonment and Putin’s regime. In August 2024, he was finally freed as part of a prisoner exchange.
In Turkey, the Saturday Mothers have held sit-in vigils in Istanbul since 1995, for loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared or murdered. They have spent more than 1,000 Saturdays conducting peaceful demonstrations. After their 700th vigil in August 2018, they faced a crackdown, their peaceful protest broken up with tear gas, water cannons and arrests. Finally in March 2025, 45 members of the Saturday Mothers who had been arrested were acquitted.
Elsewhere in Turkey in 2024, mothers of Crimean political prisoners held a series of exhibitions called I Will Always Wait For You, My Child, demonstrating how their lives had been devastated by the Russian occupation of Crimea. Photos and captions were displayed on easels and online, each with the photo of a mother whose child was ripped away from her, detained and taken to Russia.
The exhibition was supported by Ukrainian NGO Human Rights Centre ZMINA, the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey, and the Crimean Tatar diaspora.
“My children are my air. I will fight for them until my last breath,” wrote Dilyara Abdullaeva, a 70-year-old mother whose sons Uzeir and Teymur were sentenced to 12.5 and 16.5 years in a strict regime colony.
On the UK’s shores, Laila Soueif has been putting her life at risk for her son, British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
El-Fattah has been in and out of prison in Egypt for the last decade, after becoming a vocal pro-democracy campaigner. When his most recent sentence of five years came to an end last September, he was not released. His mother went on a hunger strike for the next five months, and was eventually told by doctors that her life was at risk.
When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally made a call to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in February this year, she switched to a partial hunger strike, to give the negotiation process time to take its course.
Soueif spoke to me over a video call this week, and she described herself as “functioning”.
“I realised that both the Egyptian and the British government are not going [to act], except when there is a crisis. So, I decided to create the crisis,” she said.
While in the past she has felt enthusiastic about campaigning, albeit sometimes exhausted and bored by the situation, since September she has felt very angry.
Soueif’s hunger strike lasted an incredibly long time before she deteriorated, but she doesn’t think that what she has done is particularly extraordinary.
“I really believe that most mothers would be willing to take that kind of risk for their kids,” she said. She is probably right. Regardless, it’s a position no mother wishes to be in.
A hunger strike was not Soueif’s first port of call. She had taken legal routes, staged demonstrations and spoken to the British government.
“In the end, none of it worked,” she said.
She is now worried she made the wrong choice coming off her hunger strike, as the momentum seems to have been lost. She is considering taking it up again, and can only hope there are motions of clemency from the Egyptian government around the end of Ramadan in a few days’ time. If she does go back on a hunger strike, she will be putting herself at huge risk.
Her message to other mothers fighting for their loved ones is this: “If you start a fight, don’t give up. Because however hard the fight is, to give up without achieving your objective will probably be much, much harder.”
In this fight, she has never been alone. She spoke about the incredible solidarity she has had, and the difference it has made.
From exile in Lithuania, Tsikhanouskaya acknowledged that mothers like herself need some time, care and a listening ear too. While she fights for freedom in Belarus, she also continues to be an ordinary woman.
“Save yourself first, and then go and ruin dictatorships,” she said.
Mothers, even when they’re not fighting autocrats, have incredible strength and resilience. Perhaps, as some of these women show, it is the mothers who will get dissidents out of prison, and take down oppressive regimes.
