The political decline in Uganda didn’t happen suddenly. It developed gradually, characterized by the tight, tense pace of a repressive state machine clashing with fragmented opposition. No one shows this widespread tension more clearly than Kizza Besigye, a doctor turned dissident. His years of persecution at the hands of President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for more than four decades, showcase the worsening human rights situation in the country and how its constitutional commitments have eroded.
Besigye and his assistant were the victims of an extra-territorial abduction in Kenya and were then secretly and forcibly brought back to Uganda. By ignoring formal extradition treaties, consular notifications, and judicial supervision, the operation shows how state-supported security forces regularly cross international borders in order to put a stop to dissent.
When civilians such as Besigye are captured, they are regularly brought before military tribunals, known as the General Court Martial, on security-related charges. Even though, according to domestic and international law, trying civilians in military courts is unconstitutional, these tribunals report directly to the executive and military command bodies rather than to an independent judiciary. Whenever Besigye’s defense lawyers have tried to challenge these unconstitutional trials, they are met with state retaliation, arbitrary arrests, and physical intimidation. By punishing their defense lawyers, the state removes the final legal safeguards that protect political opponents.
Besigye’s persecution can only be understand in the context of the impunity that operates in modern competitive authoritarian regimes. In countries in which executive power has been held by one individual for decades, the survival of the ruling elite relies to a large extent on the total loyalty of the security forces. In return for this loyalty, the state either implicitly or explicitly promises the officers complete protection from being prosecuted for the abuses they carry out against political opponents.
The government’s campaign against dissidents like Besigye makes use of methods that leave no written record. It relies on detention centers that are not acknowledged—commonly referred to as “safe houses”— together with unofficial holding rooms located within military barracks. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution requires that all detention facilities be officially published and subject to inspection. Nevertheless, the country’s intelligence agencies regularly fail to comply with these requirements.
The government silences activists, critics, and opposition members by placing them in these secret detention cells without giving them access to lawyers, their families, or the Uganda Human Rights Commission. Independent observers such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recorded abuses in these detention facilities such as electric shocks, prolonged stress positions such as the kandoya position with hands and feet tied behind the back, and targeted sexual violence.
Elsewhere in Africa
Uganda’s system of institutionalized impunity is by no means rare in Africa. In many neo-patrimonial and competitive authoritarian regimes, senior officials regularly use the legal system and the security forces as weapons in order to avoid being held accountable.
Since coming to power decades ago, President Paul Biya of Cameroon has systematically used anti-terrorism laws and military tribunals to deal with members of civil society, journalists, and opposition politicians. Places like Yaoundé’s Kondengui Prison have become symbols of repression supported by the executive power, where civilian dissent is diverted away from scrutiny by the independent judiciary and directed instead into obscure military procedures.
Since independence, Eritrea has been governed under an indefinite form of authoritarian rule and has completely abolished the checks provided by legislative bodies as well as all the practical constitutional arrangements. Control by Isaias Afwerki regime is kept up by means of large-scale, indefinite military conscription and through the complete suppression of independent judicial institutions, thus removing any possibilities of legal accountability.
After the 2017 military coup, the government of Zimbabwe has consistently used the criminal justice system as a tool against its political opponents, members of civil society, and student leaders. It is a common practice of the Emmerson Mnangagwa administration to impose long pretrial detentions, refuse bail on weak grounds, and bring in politically motivated accusations—such as charges of inciting public violence or organizing unlawful gatherings—in order to restrict civic space and prevent meaningful accountability for state actions.
During the long period of rule by the Paul Kagame and Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Rwandan government has placed heavy restrictions on political pluralism and freedom of expression. Broad provisions in the penal code relating to national security, defamation, and the aftermath of the 1994 genocide are frequently used to criminalize dissent, and the security agencies and intelligence services are employed to get rid of critics both inside the country and by means of operations carried out across borders.
By consistently ignoring regional judicial oversight, carrying out extrajudicial abductions across borders, and turning their domestic courts into political tools, a number of member states of the African Union weaken the normative systems established by the African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights. This kind of systematic failure has a direct impact on the continental objectives that focus on sustainable economic development, transparent governance, and stable democratic transitions, and it continues the outdated international stereotypes about governance crises in the region.
Shift in U.S. Policy
The Biden administration took a more assertive rights-based stance in its bilateral relations with Kampala. The administration stated that there had been “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” It pointed to the introduction of harsh anti-homosexuality laws as reasons for formally excluding Uganda from the profitable African Growth and Opportunity Act trade agreement, thus denying Ugandan exporters duty-free access to the U.S. market. Together with trade sanctions, Washington put visa restrictions on certain Ugandan officials who were involved in public corruption, electoral suppression, and serious human rights violations, thus showing that individual accountability was still a key element of its diplomatic approach.
However, with the return of the Trump administration, U.S. policy towards Uganda has changed in a way that is entirely predictable, moving towards transactional diplomacy and economic pragmatism. Rather than publicly criticizing human rights, foreign governance, or flawed electoral processes, the second Trump administration has mostly pulled back from such outspoken criticism and has instead concentrated on key strategic and commercial agreements.
This relaxed attitude toward internal crackdowns, part of a larger trend in which concerns about human rights are less important than realpolitik and bilateral security cooperation, has given a quiet sense of reassurance to established regional leaders. If specific local or strategic interests such as threats to Christian communities are not directly at stake, then the Trump administration ignores dubious election cycles and crackdowns by the executive branch. Instead of basing its relations with these countries on human rights standards, the administration focuses on bilateral cooperation regarding migration, security arrangements, and trade concessions, which in effect protects established executives from international criticism.
The present tension in U.S. policy can be traced back to historical practices that have lasted for decades. Throughout the Cold War and continuing into the War on Terror that followed the attacks of 9/11, Washington has generally placed a greater emphasis in its relations with sub-Saharan Africa on cooperation against terrorism, maintaining regional stability, and building military alliances than on promoting domestic democratization. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni managed to present his government as an essential security guarantee for the West and has made substantial contributions to regional peacekeeping operations, for example through the African Union Mission in Somalia.
In the past, this important security alliance has served as a buffer. Although U.S. administrations, whether Democratic or Republican, have on various occasions given out diplomatic rebukes, imposed specific visa restrictions, or modified trade preferences as a reaction to severe crackdowns, Washington has always been reluctant to drive its long-standing strategic allies to the point of collapse, for fear that undermining a well-established regime might result in dangerous security vacuums.
The institutionalization of lawfare, secret safe houses, and military trials in Uganda is a serious structural problem for the country. At home, such violations of the law breach the social agreement that existed after independence, making it clear to citizens that their constitutional rights are only conditional privileges that the executive can grant or take away at its discretion.
This state-supported impunity—in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa—shows the limits of international pressure. Whether facing the economic sanctions imposed by previous Western governments or the deal-making indifference of the present ones, the elites in Kampala and other African capitals still put short-term self-preservation before long-term institutional integrity. These elites have sacrificed the dignity and the democratic future of their countries to ensure the survival of lawless regimes.
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