Kampala, Uganda – It was a local election and, for most of the day, it was peaceful, says Huzaifa Mugerwa, a young journalist covering for the first time.
But while the day of the vote ended, said Mugerwa, a masked man kicked an urn. Police watched people start shouting, then men in military uniforms took the masked man. People started to throw stones on the army. Then, he said, the soldiers started to beat people. Two other military vehicles arose, with more soldiers.
Mugerwa broadcast the event, until he was approached by masked men who asked for whom he worked.
“He took my recorder, my position and my camera, raised me by the pants so that only my toes could touch the ground and dragged me in a van,” explains Mugerwa. Inside, he said, were two other journalists. Mugerwa says he was blindfolded, interviewed and beaten.
“They asked if I worked for Bobi Wine,” said Mugerwa, referring to the controversial activist, singer and politician.
This continued for six or seven hours, he said, until it was thrown from the vehicle.
Violence against journalists, a long threat and often a realityAroused while Uganda headed for the general elections in January 2026. Mugerwa and others fear that the violence and intimidation of the security forces dissuade adequate and true coverage of the elections and threaten public access to vital information.
Emmanuel Kirunda, Secretary General of Uganda Journalists Association AssociationSaid that 33 journalists were attacked by armed forces during a period of two days in March, when they covered the same election as Huzaifa covered.
“This forced many media organizations to suspend covering the elections, calling (in) their journalists because it was no longer sure,” he said.
Daniel Kalinaki, director general of the Edia Group nation editorial in Uganda, a leading private media group, posted on X that journalists from the organization would be withdrawn from the coverage of this same election because they were targeted and attacked by armed soldiers.
Chris Magezi, acting spokesperson for the Ugandan popular defense forces – the Ugandan army – says that violence against journalists during this election is the result of ineffective coordination between the military and the media. Better coordination is necessary, he says, to avoid violence in the future.
Magezi says Militant politicians with the national unit platformThe main opposition party led by Bobi Wine, whose legal name is Robert Kyagularyi Ssentamu, are responsible for violence.
“The radical number, they attacked other people who, according to them, do not support their boss,” he said, adding that such a conduct forces the police to call the army to safeguard.
General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, head of the defense forces – and the son of President Yoweri Museveni – in 2022 promised in an article on X that journalists “will soon be felt. We will crush you.
Julius Mucunguzi, spokesperson for the Ugandan electoral commission, says that the media play an essential role in ensuring free and fair elections, but the Commission cannot guarantee the security of journalists.
The best thing, he says, is that journalists work as a collective. “The electoral commission alone cannot stop brutality,” he says.
Violence against journalists in Uganda dates back several decades. In 1944, Daudi Mukubira, founder of Buganda Nyaffe, a publication that accused the British colonial regime of enslaving black Africans through unjust policies, was arrested and judged. The attack on press freedom and journalists continued even in post-independence governments with the closure of media organizations and journalists’ murders during the Milton Obote and Idi Amin regimes of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.
Nothing indicates that control and violence against the media will end now, even in the light of a decision of the High Court in 2024 that the attacks on journalists are unconstitutional, explains Kirunda, of Uganda Journalists Association.
There is “little or no will of the armed forces to protect journalists,” he said.
Miracle Ibrahim, a Top TV journalist, says that he almost lost his eye during his declaration on an election in February. Members of the joint anti-terrorism working group approached him and someone hit him hard, he said.
“I remember touching where I had been struck and felt a hole instead of my eye,” he said, adding that he was soaked in blood. He was taken to a local hospital and suffered surgery. To his surprise, he said, the doctors told him that he would keep his eye and recover his sight. He says he sometimes feels, sometimes terrible pain.
He says he will continue to work as a journalist because he loves his job.
“We have no problem with the army,” he said. “We are not armed.”
Mugerwa also says that he will remain in journalism, but only because there are few jobs in other areas.
“If I can find another job that pays me well, I will certainly leave journalism,” he said. “The risk, the pain, the treatment inhuman by the authorities (who are) supposed to protect me when I do my work, is not worth it.”