Ugandan Activist Flees After Husband Abducted

Feminist and political activist Stella Nyanzi has fled to Kenya to seek asylum with her three children. Nyanzi, who a year ago was in prison for writing a poem which used an explicit description of the Ugandan President’s birth and his mother’s vagina to criticize his rule, alleges her partner was abducted and tortured after last month’s elections. “I fled to get my voice back. I fled to get my mind back. I fled to get my freedom back,” Nyanzi told CNN in a phone interview on Thursday, explaining that this was one of several abductions of people close to her which triggered her to flee. Nyanzi ran for a seat in parliament in the January vote, which was marred by deadly violence in the months leading up to the general election. At least 50 people were killed at demonstrations in November after the detention of President Yoweri Museveni’s main opponent, singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine, according to Human Rights Watch. Nyanzi didn’t win her seat, and a week after the vote, her partner, David Musiri — a member of Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform — was abducted from his car along with his brother, she said. Several Ugandan lawmakers have raised the issue of “rampant” kidnappings, criticizing the “total disregard of the arrest procedures by police and other security agencies.”

SOURCE: CNN