ZAM’s investigative journalism network appeals to international community to stand by Uganda’s media and civil society as citizens face an iron fist from an autocrat president set to remain in power.
On Tuesday 13 January, two days before elections to be held on January 15, Uganda’s autocratic regime suspended ten human rights and media organisations in the country. The suspension, which included the freezing of the organisations’ bank accounts, was announced by Uganda’s “NGO Bureau” with immediate effect, citing investigations into “activities alleged to be prejudicial to national security.”
The affected organisations include ZAM network partners the investigative journalism Agora Research Centre, the Network of Public Interest Lawyers and the civil liberties monitoring organisation Chapter Four. Besides these, the Alliance for Election Finance Monitoring, the Centre for Constitutional Governance, the Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda, the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, the African Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and the African Centre for Media Excellence were also suspended. Each organisation received letters from the Bureau notifying them of the suspension, citing intelligence information alleging that they are “engaged in activities that contravene Uganda’s laws and threaten national security, contrary to Section 42(d) of the NGO Act.”
The clampdown comes barely two days before Uganda conducts presidential elections on January 15th, 2026. The organisations that have now been banned would have been the foremost entities checking on feared egregious abuses and vote rigging by the ruling party.
This clampdown does not stand on its own. A day before the banning, the army already rolled out tanks and deployed soldiers across several suburbs in Uganda’s capital Kampala and other towns. Two weeks earlier, executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Governance Sarah Bireete was imprisoned and charged over vague allegations, with analysts pointing out that Bireete had been critical of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (81), who is running for a seventh five-year term in the elections. Previous elections in Uganda in 2021, in which Museveni ran for his sixth term, resulted in 54 killings of pro-democracy protesters.
ZAM stands with Uganda’s journalists, pro-democracy activists, public interest lawyers and professionals and other independent voices who have now seen their hopes for a fair chance to cast their vote on the upcoming polling day dashed. We and our partner Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors call on the international community to support Uganda’s civil society and strongly pressurize Uganda’s rulers to abandon its oppressive ways. Like in Tanzania previously -an election that saw 700+ people killed last October- an autocratic regime’s pro forma voting event is simply not a real election.
For queries, please contact ZAM’s investigations editor Evelyn Groenink at evelyn@zammagazine.com.
