Amnesty Worldwide says web blackout ‘particularly alarming’ as election marketing campaign ‘marred by large repression’.
Revealed On 14 Jan 2026
Uganda is going through mounting calls to elevate a nationwide internet blackout earlier than a contentious election, with the United Nations saying the government-imposed restrictions are “deeply worrying”.
In a social media submit on Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Workplace confused that “open entry to communication & data is essential to free & real elections”.
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“All Ugandans should be capable of participate in shaping their future & the way forward for their nation,” it said.
The decision comes a day after a Ugandan authorities regulatory physique instructed cellular community operators to dam public web entry, beginning on Tuesday night, because the East African nation readied for a January 15 normal election.
Web monitor NetBlocks said in its newest replace on Wednesday that Uganda was “within the midst of a widespread web shutdown”.
“Removed from halting misinformation, the measure is more likely to restrict transparency and enhance the danger of vote fraud,” the group warned.
The federal government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, 81, has been accused of overseeing a years-long crackdown on its critics, arresting political opposition leaders and their supporters.
Museveni is being challenged in Thursday’s vote by pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine, whose marketing campaign rallies have been routinely disrupted by the Ugandan authorities.
The UN Human Rights Office final week warned that Ugandans can be heading to the polls amid “widespread repression and intimidation in opposition to the political opposition, human rights defenders, journalists and people with dissenting views”.
The Uganda Communications Fee defended the web shutdown as essential to curb “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and associated dangers”.
However Tigere Chagutah, the East and Southern Africa regional director at Amnesty Worldwide, condemned the restrictions as “a brazen assault on the fitting to freedom of expression”.
“It’s particularly alarming coming because it does simply earlier than a vital election already marred by large repression and an unprecedented crackdown on opposition events and dissenting voices,” Chagutah stated in a statement on Wednesday.
“Blanket shutdowns disrupt individuals’s mobility, livelihoods and their skill to entry very important data. They’re inherently disproportionate below worldwide human rights regulation and must not ever be imposed.”
Widespread violence throughout Uganda’s final normal elections marketing campaign, in 2021, left at the very least 54 individuals useless, in response to Human Rights Watch, whereas the authorities additionally lower off social media and web entry.
