Uganda's activists face increasing digital violence

Four years ago, the coronavirus pandemic increased human reliance on technology which enabled virtual engagements.
Research by the National Library of Medicine, a US-based biomedical informatics and the world's largest biomedical online library shows that the Covid-19 imposed restrictions led to an inevitable surge in the use of digital technologies to adjust to new ways of interaction, life, and work. 
For Uganda, then came the hybrid concept of election campaigns—that is, the fusion of traditional processes and scientific ones including usage of Twitter and Facebook—for the 2021 polls.
The election campaigns were marred by among others, internet disruption to total blackouts, and intensive rampant disinformation campaigns. 
Access to Facebook was consequently blocked and remains to this day, after the American social media giant, Meta Platforms Inc, the owner of the social media website, shut down dozens of accounts linked to the government PR machinery for spreading disinformation.
A BBC investigation early this year lifted the lid on a web of fake social media accounts under false identities that spread pro-government messages while targeting critics with threats during and after the 2021 polls.
The freezing of Facebook, which is only accessible by VPN, led many Ugandans to migrate to the microblogging site, X, formerly Twitter. 
Regardless, social media emerged as a key tool for driving narratives, creating social change, and to some extent holding power to account, against the backdrop of poor or non-existent service delivery across the country.
Progressively, the digital streets have become the avenues for speaking truth to power. Journalists, activists, and human rights defenders continually exhibit their work on various online platforms to express themselves as individuals with significant digital space influence. 
The discourse has also meant pushback by those targeted, especially in high-profile positions.
Moses Karis Oteba, a protection and psychosocial support consultant says most human rights activists are moving online due to the shrinking civic space and wider reach online.
“Most human rights defenders and activists are finding the online space a more secure alternative to physical engagements. There are so many more people online. So if you want to reach many people, you will find them online as opposed to going into the physical spaces,” Mr Oteba says.
A July 2024 digital trends report by DataReportal, a global research organisation that provides data on digital trends shows that by January 2024, Uganda had 33.34 million active cellular mobile connections, 13.3 million internet users with 27 percent internet penetration and 2.6 million social media users, about 5.3 percent of the total population. Of these, 638,800 users are on X, formerly Twitter.
As a brand new form of online activism and mobilisation continues to gather steam, such as the exhibitions this year on the country’s moribund health sector, broken roads infrastructure, the systemic nepotism and cronyism, and most recently abuse and mismanagement that borders on criminal conduct in parliament, so are the cases of online violence growing against activists. 
The spate of online violence seen include discrediting professionally, vilification, defamation, personal attacks designed to humiliate and silence, bigotry, shaming of all forms, and in growing cases, doxing—that is, searching and publishing private information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent. Women journalists and activists are disproportionately affected.
A woman uses a computer to browse the internet. PHOTO/ MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
Dicey navigation
“My mental health has been greatly affected in a very big way. You get irritated. You get emotional. You get overwhelmed…You cannot stay safe online, you can only mitigate the impact,” says journalist, lawyer, and social justice activist, Agather Atuhaire, who leads the activism group, Agora, that superintended to expose the rot in parliament putting its credibility to test.
The #ParliamentExhibition triggered the March to Parliament campaign in August which saw several activists arrested and remanded.
Analysis of the hashtag #March2Parliament reveals 302 million searches of the tag, and 21 million interactions on TikTok and X. Of these, 224 interactions were negative but the figure could be higher since the social media applications are not configured to recognise offensive communication in most African languages, for instance this post on X attacking the personality of Culton Scovia Nakamya, a journalist with one of the local TV stations. These engagements and mentions were on X Spaces (audio formats) and Tweets. 
Consequently, more hash tags continue to emerge in the online space as Uganda’s democracy and good governance advocates take to their gadgets to voice public grievances over tax payers’ demand for public accountability and better social services. 
Other social media platforms like TikTok continue to morph from a fun-filled space with private lives going public to short satirical videos meant to drive narratives to voice their frustrations in the country.
Brenda Namata, the programmes coordinator on strategic gender initiative at POLICY, a data governance and feminist collection of technologies in Uganda told Daily Monitor that their 2022 research reveals that whereas more women are embracing the digital space, the internet continues to be a dark area for many.
“Women are increasingly suffering the attacks online spilling from the digital space into the physical space and the traditional attacks against women from the physical space are also spilling into the digital space,” Ms Namata said.
This experience is shared by other journalists and activists.
Ms Atuhaire, who in March scooped the International Women of Courage by the US State Department and was last week on Wednesday listed among the Times magazine's 100 key individuals, told of demeaning comments and harassment online compared to her male counterparts doing the same activism work.
“I am among the most attacked [online] persons even though my other male colleagues also get attacked. Being a woman makes you an easier target,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Ms Atuhaire is happy to share milestones gained in online activism as more Ugandans appreciate the use of social media as an alternative to physical gatherings to agitate for change in the governance system of the country.
“I did journalistic writing here and there [in mainstream media] and I did not see the impact in terms of shaking tables; having Ugandans react….It is not the impact I had seen in traditional media. The incremental impact is important. People on X are now asking more questions. That’s an achievement.” Ms Atuhaire said.
Faizah Salima, a radio and TV talk show host with Nation Media Group Uganda, with over 80,000 followers on X and she uses the platform to earn a living recounted a similar experience.
“I like to call social media my jam, like my jelly to the butter. It has been a great place to connect with people who listen to me or interact with me on mainstream media. It has also for me proven to be a great place to make money, grow a career away from mainstream media,” Ms Salima narrated.
As a journalist, Ms Nakamya with about 110,000 followers on X uses the platform to exhibit her work and share her journey of resilience and triumph, but not without being trolled, harassed or bots trying to put her down.
A woman uses Internet in Uganda. PHOTO/EDGAR R. BATTE
Digital push back
Even with such a huge following on social media, the three female online activists face a similar dilemma of navigating online abuses while driving narratives on issues they present to their audiences.
“Some of the people harassing us are the same ones we expect to keep us safe. My very first threat and invasion of privacy and whatever else I have faced in this work was in 2022 when I published a story [on X] about the purchase of luxurious cars for the speaker and deputy. There is a police officer who works in parliament now, [a former CID]. He authored a report where I am adversely mentioned. That report has my number…Twitter account, saying Agather has personal hatred against parliament. The Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) is investigating me for doing my job as if I have committed a crime and criminals are there at large,” Ms Atuhaire said.
Sometimes the threats extended to great lengths. Ms Atuhaire recounted that her sister was recently approached by unknown men and asked her to relay a message that: “Tell your sister we will run her over. We are not going to have sleepless nights because of her [X posts]. Does she think she owns this country? 
Does she think that she is the one who cares about this country more than everyone else? She should stop making our love difficult. We are worried every day that people will go on the streets because she is inciting them and something like that. My sister was shaking. Now they have taken the threat to another level. You are no longer fearing for your life but you are responsible for another person’s life, your loved one.”
Owing to such and more, Ms Atuhaire said she does not see herself continuing activism work for long due to the mental exhaustion it has exacted on her against backdrop of the lurking personal threats.
Report
In a 2020 study by UNESCO and the International Centre for Journalists, 73 percent of 1,210 women journalists interviewed noted they had experienced online violence in the course of their work, 20 percent noted they had been attacked offline in connection with online violence targeting them, 25 percent had received threats of physical violence, 18 percent had been threatened with sexual violence while 16 percent of women journalists narrated that online harassment and abuse was “much worse” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Online violence against journalists is a significant feature of what we call ‘platform capture’, which involves the weaponisation of social media by bad-faith actors, in combination with the structural failures of the platforms’ business models and product design, and the virtual entrapment of many news organisations and journalists into platform dependency,” the study titled Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists detailed.
Mr Karis Oteba explained that social media attacks affect female activists and robs them of their confidence, an asset that greatly contributes to their work. This is reinforced by Ms Namata, who said that online attacks have a spilling effect on the physical and emotional wellness of online activists.
Social media attacks can be by users who hide under pseudo names and act as bots but they can be traced.
No one is safe
There are also real accounts whose activities can be analysed to show patterns of how they interact with content created by women online and their views on women.
To search an account’s interaction history on X platform including abuses, type on the search space (from: write the X handle name of the account, leave out the symbol @ and space. Then write the word or group of words you are looking for in that handle, click search and it brings all the history in chronology from the latest to the time the account was opened.
While cyber/online crime is one of the fastest growing crimes across the world as more and more of us use the Internet in our daily lives according to the UN, the violence met out against women, though not a new phenomenon, has escalated rapidly posing significant threats to women’s safety and well-being both on and offline.
Whereas there is a clear trend of online abuses and harassment of online female activists in Uganda, the much-touted Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act 2022 has not been widely used to protect content creators and online activists from attacks. 
The police annual crime report hardly presents an analysis of online harassment. 
Laws
The law, which set hefty fines and lengthy jail terms for convicted offenders, was hastily designed to protect those in power from online scrutiny and sometimes harassment. The Bill in parliament was moved by Kampala Central MP Muhammad Nsereko in early 2022 and later signed into law.
The law was consequently challenged in court and in January last year the Constitutional court nullified section 25 on using electronic devices to willfully disturb the peace of others.
Sources inside the police's cyber unit told Daily Monitor that online attacks are categorised under cyber-crime without specifics. Sources, however, indicated that a lot is still required to train police officers at posts and stations to understand how to record cases of online attacks whenever they are reported for further investigations. 
In an increasingly digitalised world, police authorities divulged that those who report cases of online attacks and abuses are high profile political and social figures who can afford the rigorous process of seeking for justice.
As such there are no clear figures of online violence and harassment being investigated by the police for trials in court because most victims of online attacks and abuses cannot easily afford the costs of following up cases in court.
In the meantime, most victims of online abuse have resorted to either professional counselling for those who can access the services, withdrawing from the platforms or ignoring the abusers among other coping mechanisms.
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