In the heart of East Africa, a troubling pattern of state repression and human rights abuses has emerged, casting a shadow over the region’s aspirations for democracy and justice. Over the past several weeks, events in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya have brought these issues into sharp relief, with allegations of illegal detentions, torture, and even extrajudicial killings sparking outrage among citizens and international observers alike.
The latest controversy centers on Uganda’s Special Forces Command (SFC) facility in Kasenyi, Wakiso District. On November 17, 2025, the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) announced it had launched a verification process into claims that people were being illegally detained at this military site. This move followed harrowing allegations from Kenyan nationals Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, who said they were held inside the facility for 38 days along with more than 150 other detainees, including military officers and foreign nationals.
Njagi and Oyoo’s story is emblematic of a broader crisis. According to Daily Monitor, they described seeing a host of other detainees, such as Amos Rwangomani—a National Resistance Movement cadre missing since August—former Flying Squad operative Moses Kasiba, six Nigerians (including Joseph Ifeanyichukwu and John Alexander), and a South African national. The pair’s ordeal only ended after their lawyers obtained a habeas corpus order and President Yoweri Museveni intervened following engagement with Kenyan authorities. Before their release, Ugandan security agencies had denied knowledge of their whereabouts.
The conditions inside the SFC facility, as recounted by Njagi, were grim. "There were many people suffering from medical conditions, but they were not allowed to see a medical doctor. The hygiene was pathetic... the 38 days we were in handcuffs day and night," he said. He further alleged that John Alexander, one of the detained Nigerians, "was tortured using pliers" and bore visible wounds. The detainees, Njagi claimed, included 150 army officers—colonels, lieutenants, and majors—imprisoned alongside civilians and foreigners.
Ugandan law is clear: torture, detention without trial, and holding suspects in ungazetted facilities are strictly prohibited. The UHRC Act specifically empowers the Commission "to visit any place or building where a person is suspected to be illegally detained" and to order the release of anyone held unlawfully. Yet, as Ms. Pauline Nansamba Mutumba, UHRC’s director of Complaints, Investigations and Legal Services, told Daily Monitor, “What we can assure the public is no one, whether Ugandan or foreign, should ever be held outside the law. Much as we inspect places of detention, including military facilities, we don’t do it every hour of every day. Human rights work is not omnipresence; it is vigilance. We go where allegations arise, we verify, we document, and we demand accountability.”
Relatives of missing persons, including those of Rwangomani, have sought help from Uganda’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Maj Gen (rtd) Kahinda Otafiire. Yet, the search for answers has often met with official denials. Gen Otafiire recently told a public lecture that Rwangomani had petitioned the court to compel the State to produce him, but the Attorney General maintained that no agency had him in custody. The case of Moses Kasiba, a former Flying Squad operative, is similarly fraught—he has been repeatedly arrested over the years, implicated in the 2017 torture of a local mayor, released, and then detained again two months ago.
The issue is not isolated to Uganda. On October 30, 2025, violent demonstrations erupted at the Namanga One-Post Border crossing between Kenya and Tanzania, following a general election marred by the exclusion of two leading opposition candidates. Reports cited by Nation suggest that hundreds were killed by Tanzanian security forces during the protests, with bodies allegedly moved to undisclosed locations to obscure the true death toll. The scale of the violence, and the apparent attempts at a cover-up, have only deepened suspicions about the willingness of authorities to tell the truth.
Such incidents are part of a worrying trend across East Africa. According to Nation, the United Nations has repeatedly raised grave concerns about human rights violations in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. The regimes, for their part, have responded with denial and hostility. Kenyan President William Ruto, for example, flatly denied allegations of abductions, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances of critics during an interview with Al Jazeera. Ugandan President Museveni has characterized human rights activists and critics as saboteurs or foreign stooges, justifying brutal police action in the name of national security. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has gone so far as to call dissent "un-Tanzanian."
Coordinated abductions of critics from neighboring countries have become disturbingly common. Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye was reportedly abducted from Nairobi and delivered to a military court, where he remains in custody. Tanzanian journalist Maria Sarungi survived a kidnapping in Nairobi. Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan democracy campaigner Agather Atuhaire were abducted in Tanzania, tortured, and then expelled to their home countries. Most recently, Njagi and Oyoo’s abduction and incommunicado detention by Ugandan forces sparked fears for their lives, until relentless advocacy and the intervention of a retired leader secured their release.
Another tool of repression has been the weaponization of the court system. Dissenters across the region—including Besigye in Uganda, Tindu Lissu in Tanzania, and Gen Z protesters in Kenya—have been charged with terrorism. As Nation points out, this use of anti-terror statutes against political opponents is reminiscent of colonial and apartheid-era tactics, when critics were routinely labeled as terrorists to justify their detention and mistreatment. It’s a bitter irony, given that real terrorist threats continue to loom over East Africa.
Yet, even amid these bleak developments, there are signs of hope. As Nairobi-based commentator Tee Ngugi observed in Nation, there is a growing sense of transnational solidarity among East African citizens. "In the past, Africans were too afraid to speak up for each other. Only foreigners stood up for the rights of Africans. This growing pan-African vision of freedom and togetherness will overcome the 'trinity of terror'," he wrote.
In May 2025, this spirit of accountability was on display when UHRC chairperson Mariam Wangadya wrote to the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, ordering the release of Edward Ssebuufu, known as Eddie Mutwe, after images of him in custody surfaced online. Gen Muhoozi’s response on social media was defiant, but the episode underscored the growing pressure on authorities to respect human rights and the rule of law.
The struggle for justice in East Africa is far from over. But as citizens, activists, and international bodies continue to demand accountability, the region’s leaders may yet be forced to reckon with their actions. For those languishing in detention, and for the families of the disappeared, that reckoning cannot come soon enough.