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Uganda’s pre‑election landscape has been marked by a sharp and deliberate escalation in repression, with opposition‑aligned musicians drawn into the same web of arbitrary arrests, house arrests and intimidation facing the broader opposition. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has warned that this crackdown risks emptying the electoral process of genuine political choice, as security forces target not only party officials and supporters but also artists whose voices mobilise the public. Against this backdrop, the continued silence around the status of several opposition musicians after reported house‑arrest‑style operations in late 2025 crystallises wider concerns about enforced incommunicado detention and the weaponisation of uncertainty against Uganda’s creative community.

Escalating arrests and siege tactics
Türk’s December 2025 statement notes that at least 550 people, most of them linked to the National Unity Platform (NUP), have been arrested since the beginning of the year, with more than 300 of these detentions occurring after official campaigning began in September. Security forces have repeatedly surrounded NUP rally sites with heavily armed deployments, using live ammunition, tear gas, batons and other weapons to disperse supporters, killing and injuring several people and establishing an atmosphere of permanent threat around opposition organising. Within those numbers are musicians, DJs and performance crews who double as campaign mobilisers, and who are increasingly treated as security risks because of their ability to attract large crowds and translate political messages into popular culture.

Musicians at the centre of opposition politics
The role of musicians in Ugandan politics has grown steadily over the past decade, with Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) symbolising a broader movement of artists turning their popularity into political capital. His transition from chart‑topping musician to NUP leader built on years of socially conscious music and live performances that criticised corruption, inequality and authoritarian rule. As his political profile rose, the state response hardened: concerts were blocked, venues intimidated, broadcast of his songs discouraged, and he was repeatedly arrested or placed under de facto house arrest around protests and electoral moments, establishing a template for how the security apparatus deals with opposition artists.

Nubian Li, a close musical collaborator of Bobi Wine and NUP candidate for Nakawa Division mayor, shows how that template is now applied to other figures around him. In September 2025 he was violently forced into a police truck and taken to an undisclosed location shortly after his nomination at the Electoral Commission offices in Ntinda, with his whereabouts initially unknown and no clear charges presented. The incident, coming amid other abductions and arrests of NUP figures, reinforced fears that musician‑politicians can be removed from public life at critical electoral moments through opaque “security” operations.

From “drones” to safe houses
The OHCHR warning emphasises that the current crackdown is not a sudden aberration but the intensification of a pattern that includes arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and the use of unacknowledged “safe houses” to hold detainees incommunicado. Rights groups describe security forces using unmarked vehicles, widely referred to as “drones”, to pick up opposition supporters and transport them to unofficial facilities, where they are denied contact with families or lawyers and exposed to serious abuse before being produced in court, if at all. For musicians aligned with the opposition, this means that a police cordon around a home or studio can slide almost seamlessly into enforced disappearance, especially when authorities refuse to confirm where a person is held or under what legal authority.

Reports surrounding the protest‑vote singer Omukunja Atasera underline the physical danger musicians face when they participate in NUP activities. Local posts and videos from October 2025 describe him being shot and injured in the legs during political tensions in Nateete, with subsequent references to his presence in police custody and online accusations of cyberstalking, although official information about his legal status remained scant. Fragmentary accounts suggest how criminal allegations can be layered onto physical violence to keep politically active artists under continuous pressure.

Closing creative and media space

At the same time, Ugandan authorities have tightened control over the wider creative space through regulation, policing and informal pressure. Artistic freedom monitors document bans on politically charged concerts, threats against venues that host opposition artists, and the use of public order, morality or cybercrime laws to pursue performers whose work criticises the government. International observers have highlighted broader restrictions on media freedom, including beatings of journalists, withdrawal of accreditations and obstruction of independent coverage during by‑elections and opposition events, creating a closed loop in which both those who produce dissenting content and those who report on it face heightened risk.

The “continued silence” on the fate and conditions of opposition musicians after late‑2025 house‑arrest patterns therefore captures more than just the plight of a few high‑profile individuals. It signals a deeper structural assault on artistic freedom and civic space, in which music is recognised by the state as a powerful vehicle for opposition and is treated accordingly as something to be neutralised. Any credible electoral process in Uganda must therefore include full respect for the rights of artists to create, perform and participate in public life without fear of being silenced behind closed doors.

As Uganda moves toward the January 15th 2026 elections, opposition‑aligned musicians are finding themselves on the front line of a widening crackdown on dissent. From siege‑style operations around Bobi Wine’s home to the arrest of Nubian Li moments after his nomination and the shooting of protest singer Omukunja Atasera, the state is increasingly treating music as a security threat rather than a protected form of expression. Arbitrary arrests, house‑arrest patterns, “drone” abductions and concert bans are closing Uganda’s civic and creative space.
If you work on human rights, culture or elections, this is a critical case to watch and to challenge.

#ArtisticFreedom #UgandaElections #HumanRights #BobiWine #CivicSpace #FreedomOfExpression #NUP #CreativeRights
Further reading here

Uganda: Silencing the Soundtrack of Dissent

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