ONE YEAR ON: Winnie Byanyima Decries ‘Endless Injustice’ in Besigye Detention

Dr Kizza Besigye with Lutale in Court.

Sunday, November 16, 2025 marked one year since veteran opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye was arrested and detained — a milestone that his wife, Winnie Byanyima, has described as a tragic symbol of Uganda’s shrinking democratic space.

Besigye was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya on November 16, 2024, in an operation involving Ugandan security forces. He was reportedly driven across the border and detained in a military facility at Makindye Barracks, where he remains to this day.

In a strongly worded statement shared on Sunday, Byanyima — who also serves as Executive Director of UNAIDS — condemned what she called “endless injustice” and a justice system “weaponised to silence dissent.”

“It is now one year since my spouse, Dr. Kizza Besigye, was abducted from Nairobi and taken to prison in Uganda. A year later, the case has not moved in court. Endless injustice: military detention, illegal confinement, denial of bail. A justice system captured,” she wrote.

A Year of Stalled Justice

Besigye was initially charged in the General Court Martial with illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and treachery — charges that carry the death penalty.

However, after the Supreme Court ruled in January 2025 that civilians cannot be tried in military courts, the state withdrew those charges and reinstated them as treason and misprision of treason in the civilian courts.

The case has since moved from the Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court to the High Court, where Besigye has repeatedly clashed with presiding judge Justice Emmanuel Baguma, accusing him of bias and incompetence.

Header advertisement

“Detained for His Views, Not for Crime” – Byanyima

Byanyima said her husband’s continued incarceration is a political punishment for challenging President Yoweri Museveni.

“Why is he being held? Because he has different views. Because he dared to compete for the presidency. Because in Uganda, dissent is treated as a crime,” she wrote.

She added that Besigye’s ordeal mirrors a wider pattern of abductions, torture and prolonged detention of opposition activists and young Ugandans.

“Our nation’s future is being brutalised into silence.”

Besigye’s Long Journey of Resistance

Byanyima used the anniversary to recount Besigye’s decades-long involvement in Uganda’s political struggles:

– His escape from illegal detention under the Obote II regime

– His years in exile before joining the NRA bush war

– His service as one of the only two medical doctors in the guerrilla struggle

– His role as Museveni’s personal physician

– His service as National Political Commissar after 1986

– His eventual fallout with President Museveni in 2001

She said his persecution began when he spoke out against what he saw as a betrayal of the NRM’s original principles of democracy and social justice.

“Since then, he has endured arrests, torture, smears, criminalisation… but he has never wavered.”