A Ugandan TikTok user was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday for spreading “misleading and malicious” information after insulting President Yoweri Museveni, his wife, and their son.
According to authorities, between February and March, Edward Awebwa shared “vulgar” movies regarding the first family. The 24-year-old pleaded guilty.
Awebwa “is pleading for mercy, but he does not look remorseful at all for his actions,” Judge Stella Maris Amabilis said Wednesday as she read the court’s decision.
“The court had the opportunity to see the video; the language that was being used was vulgar,” she said.
“This court is of the opinion that the accused deserves punishment that will enable him to learn from his past so that next time he will respect the person of the president, the first lady, and the first son.”
NGOs often protest human rights violations in the East African country, which Museveni has ruled with an iron fist since 1986.
In 2022, Ugandan writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija fled to Germany, claiming he had been tortured in jail for insulting Museveni and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who had recently been named chief of the army and whom the writer referred to as a “baby despot.”
Stella Nyanzi, an activist and writer who has been in exile in Germany since 2022, was detained in 2019 for writing a poem critical of the president.
