‘I will not delete my posts’: Inside Uganda’s crackdown on online critics

Kampala, Uganda – Praise Aloikin Opoloje walks into the visitors’ waiting room at Luzira Women’s Prison wearing an oversized yellow-and-black striped dress and a broad smile. Detained since September 26, 2026, she was charged with the alleged unlawful use of a SIM card registered in her mother’s name. Her case has drawn attention to the risks faced by Ugandans who use social media to criticise powerful political and military figures.

Opoloje appeared before the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court on September 28, charged with using another person’s SIM card to carry out illegal activity. Opoloje says her detention followed a video in which she declared that she was not afraid of General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s military chief and son of President Yoweri Museveni. Opoloje says she was lured to a Kampala police station by a false accusation that she had stolen a carpet.

She alleges that six men then forced her into a Toyota HiAce van, locally known as a “drone”. She says the men beat her, threatened to rape her and drove towards Entebbe.