Calls mount in East Africa for release of Uganda’s Bobi Wine

Dar es Salaam/Arusha. Calls are mounting in East Africa for the release of Ugandan legislator and musician Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a Bobi Wine who is being held following a fracas that rocked a by-election campaign in Arua Town, North-West of the country’s capital Kampala.

In an open letter addressed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, ACT Wazalendo party leader Zitto Kabwe said that a better Uganda cannot be achieved when there are violations of human rights and laws in that East African country.

“East Africans tremble when injustices are done in any part of the region and you as the leader must show the way in respecting fundamental rights of your own citizens,’’ he told Mr Museveni.

Mr Kabwe said his party has been following up the current political situation in Uganda and was alarmed by the rate at which the political space had deteriorated.

He was not alone in the growing crusade for the release of “Bobi Wine.”

The East African Law Society (EALS) has castigated the Ugandan government over what it says was increasing and systematic violence targeting persons perceived to be political dissidents there.

EALS said the ongoing clampdown against civil rights protestors was a flagrant violation of the rule of law and respect to fundamental human rights and freedoms and Uganda’s obligations to the East African Community (EAC).

“The partner states to the Treaty establishing the EAC have undertaken to observe the rule of law and human rights,” Mr Richard Mugisha, the president of the Society said in a statement released in Arusha late yesterday.