Uganda: Opposition Leader Kizza Besigye's Health Deteriorates in Custody

KAMPALA, Uganda -- The health of jailed Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye is failing, his party said on Tuesday, after he was driven overnight to a medical facility in the capital of Kampala. Besigye's health “has reached a critical and deteriorating state,” the People's Front for Freedom said in a statement that also demanded unrestricted access to Besigye by his personal doctors and family. Besigye, a veteran politician who was Uganda's most prominent opposition figure before the rise of Bobi Wine, is being detained in a maximum-security jail in Kampala. He is set to be tried over treason charges he says are politically motivated. “It is a tragedy that a man who has dedicated his life to the health and freedom of others is being denied his own right to medical dignity,” said the statement by the People's Front for Freedom. “We hold the regime and the prison authorities fully accountable for his well-being.” Frank Baine, a spokesman for Uganda's prison system, denied that Besigye was in failing health. “It was a general checkup,” he said of Besigye's overnight trip to see a doctor. "This morning he was doing his exercises.” Besigye last contested the presidency in 2016. He said afterwards that elections were a waste of time in a country with an authoritarian leader whose authority depends on the armed forces. President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power since 1986, was on Saturday declared the winner of last week's presidential election. Museveni took 71.6% of the vote while his closest challenger, Wine, took 24.7% of the vote, according to official results that Wine rejected as fake. The election was marred by a days-long internet shutdown and the failure of biometric voter identification machines, long demanded by pro-democracy activists to curb voting offenses such as ballot stuffing. Museveni, 81, has stayed in power over the years by rewriting the rules. The last legal obstacles to his rule — term limits and age restrictions — have been removed from the constitution, and some of his possible rivals have been jailed or sidelined. Besigye, a physician who retired from Uganda’s military at the rank of colonel, is a former president of the Forum for Democratic Change party, for many years Uganda’s most prominent opposition group. He has long been a fierce critic of Museveni, for whom he once served as a military assistant and personal doctor. Besigye has been detained since November 2024 over allegations he plotted to overthrow the government. Museveni’s son, army chief Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has accused Besigye of plotting to kill his father, and once said the opposition figure should be hanged. Kainerugaba has repeatedly asserted his wish to succeed his father in the presidency. Museveni has said Besigye must answer for “the very serious offenses he is alleged to have been planning,” and called for “a quick trial so that facts come out.” Besigye’s followers say the charges are calculated to remove him from political contestation over Uganda’s future after Museveni. Many Ugandans expect an unpredictable political transition from Museveni, who has no obvious successor within the ranks of the ruling National Resistance Movement party.