Detained Ugandan opposition figure Besigye is on hunger strike, his wife says

12/2/2025 19:11

A prominent opposition figure in Uganda who is on trial in a military tribunal has begun a hunger strike, his wife said, two weeks after the country's top court banned courts-martial from trying civilians.



President Yoweri Museveni said his government would continue to prosecute civilians in military courts despite the Supreme Court's ruling. A spokesperson for Uganda's prisons denied that Kizza Besigye was on hunger strike.



Besigye, a long-time opponent of Museveni, was detained in neighbouring Kenya in November, in what a senior Kenyan foreign affairs official described as an abduction.



He was subsequently brought home and charged with illegal possession of firearms and with treachery, which carries the death penalty.



"Kizza Besigye is on hunger strike, detained illegally by a regime that fears his defiance more than it respects the law," Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima wrote on X late on Tuesday.



"They think they can break his spirit, but they underestimate his resolve. (Besigye) will not yield while the regime tramples on justice," said Byanyima, who is the executive director of United Nations agency UNAIDS.



Uganda's prisons spokesperson Frank Baine denied the assertion regarding her husband, telling Reuters: "Besigye is OK and he is not on a hunger strike."