Recently, PFF declared weekly days, including every Wednesday, for Ugandans to wear national flag colours as an act that demonstrates their salient and peaceful demand for the release of Besigye, Lukwago and other alleged political prisoners, but the move has since faced hurdles, citing poor mobilisation and lack of resources to provide T-shirts.

According to Lulume Bayiga, the Executive Chairperson of the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) party, since November 2020, and continuing throughout the 2026 electoral cycle, the JDP has recorded an ongoing pattern of state-linked abductions where some security agents in plain clothes or military attire, driving unmarked minibuses, have seized opposition supporters, campaign organizers, polling agents, and civic activists from streets and homes.

“We have all the reasons to believe that Lukwago has been arrested by the CDF because he had filed several applications since Besigye was arrested in Nairobi, including that on human rights enforcement, which Justice Baguma endorsed for hearing on June 30th, 2026, at the High Court,” Ssemuju said.

Speakers maintained that political corruption, including nepotism, cronyism, and vote-buying, is the principal source of Uganda’s governance crisis rather than bureaucratic theft.

The State Minister for Youth and Children Affairs, Balaam Barugahara, committed to engaging the government to have all the political prisoners released, and last week, 18 of them, including Olivia Lutaaya, pleaded guilty and are yet to serve a light sentence of four months and then after will be released after spending over four years in prison.

IS IT THE END OF THE BEGINNING OR THE BEGINNING OF THE END? Mortgaging rights for freedom?

According to Amnesty International, thousands of prisoners of conscience languish in prisons around the world, sometimes for years on...