On Tuesday, December 30, 2025, the Uganda Police Force arrested and detained Sarah Bireete, a prominent human rights activist and executive director of Centre for Constitutional Governance (CCG), on vague charges related to electoral data.
The State (prosecution) purportedly charged her with unlawful obtaining or disclosure of personal data, contrary to Section 35(1) and (2) of the Data Protection and Privacy Act, Cap 79.
The charge sheet alleges that Sarah Bireete and others still at large “unlawfully obtained or disclosed data, to wit, national voters’ information, controlled or processed by the Electoral Commission.”
The state’s disproportionate reaction to the alleged disclosure of voters’ information raises a fundamental question: what exactly is being protected, and from whom? In a constitutional democracy committed to free and fair elections, transparency about voter data should not provoke panic—unless the State fears scrutiny. Sarah Bireete’s arrest is not about data protection; it is a classic example of political persecution.
During her pre-trial detention at Nateete Police Station in Kampala, Sarah Bireete was interrogated not about data protection, but about regime-critical video clips, social media posts, and even her views on the use of the national flag by ordinary Ugandans. The focus of the interrogation exposed the real motive behind her arrest: her political opinions and expression.
Jailing individuals for their political beliefs or expression is patently unconstitutional. Article 29 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, while Article 38 provides for civic participation.
Yet political detentions like Sarah’s have become routine. The Constitution is butchered daily with impunity. More Ugandans are filling police cells and prisons for expressing dissent. We all have a duty to call out this injustice.
Bireete’s arrest, police detention, arraignment before the Chief Magistrate’s Court of Kampala at Buganda Road, and her subsequent perfunctory remand to Luzira Prison brings to mind not only her widely followed TikTok critiques of bad governance, but also a popular sentiment among Ugandan prisoners and sections of the public: that every lawyer—whether in private practice, government service, or the judiciary—should be required to serve prison time as part of their legal training.
The sentiment is not without merit. Too many judicial officers handle matters of personal liberty with alarming casualness—routinely ordering remand, making lengthy adjournments in cases of accused persons on remand, and denying bail on flimsy grounds.
Political detainees and environmental activists are treated with particular harshness. As a result, countless supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) remain incarcerated on trumped-up charges for merely supporting their party’s political positions.
A similar pattern afflicts environmental human rights defenders. Individuals who peacefully protest oil projects such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), or who demonstrate against the destruction of wetlands, are routinely arrested and detained.
In some cases, it takes ninety days or more for judicial officers at Buganda Road to grant bail to peaceful protesters. Detention, in these circumstances, becomes punishment—not process.
Worse still, delays or denials of bail are sometimes driven by sinister motives: to coerce guilty pleas from activists who are promised freedom in exchange for admissions of guilt and light sentences, often mere cautions. Due process begins to resemble a transaction because, in reality, it is one.
On Friday, January 2, 2026, I watched a video of Grade One Magistrate Her Worship Winnie Nankya Jatiko remanding Sarah Bireete to prison. Despite the presentation of substantial and credible sureties, the magistrate declined to grant bail on the flimsy pretext of allowing the State time (up to January 21, 2026) to respond to the application.
This was a blunder. Bail exists to secure liberty, not to accommodate prosecutorial whim and convenience. Courts should hear and determine bail applications immediately unless the State demonstrates exceptional circumstances sufficient to override the constitutional presumption of innocence. No such circumstances were presented.
There was no justification for remanding Sarah Bireete. This was judicial capitulation in a politically sensitive case where the State’s interest was direct, obvious, and overwhelming.
Sober judicial officers would do well to heed the guidance of former Chief Justice Wako Wambuzi and the current Justice of Appeal, Frederick Martin Stephen Engonda-Ntende, that there should be no adjournments for bail rulings. Adjourning a bail ruling defeats the very purpose of the application for the duration of the adjournment.
In Sarah Bireete’s case, the bail ruling was deferred for weeks—well beyond the 15 January 2026 presidential and parliamentary elections, about which she had been particularly vocal.
This was politically engineered remand (jail) time designed to silence a critical civil society voice. It was judicial silencing of dissent.
I recently spoke with Sarah Bireete, who told me she had not visited me during my three-month detention at Kitalya Mini-Max Prison—following illegal orders of a military tribunal—because she suffers from prison trauma. She need not have explained. I, too, avoid prison visits for the same reason.
Long after the physical torture I endured healed, the psychological trauma associated with detention persists. My experience is not unique. A colleague recently told me that a mutual friend—an activist briefly detained by police during the 2021 elections—has never fully recovered from that short episode of detention.
I recount this to educate judicial officers who underestimate the gravity of detention. Even brief incarceration can permanently or significantly alter a person’s psychological landscape.
Detention is a denial of liberty—the most precious of human pursuits. As Patrick Henry famously declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” It is also an assault on mental health.
Detention must remain a measure of last resort, reserved for genuine criminality. It must never be weaponised to punish dissent or suppress political expression.
If courts continue to treat liberty as expendable in politically inconvenient cases, they will not merely have abandoned rule of law and judicial independence—they will have surrendered their moral authority and relevance.
The author is a human rights lawyer
@kiizaeron
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