Today, we returned from Masaka Main Prison, where we visited our comrades—Eddie Mutwe, Achileo Kivumbi, Mugumya Gaddafi, and Wakabi Grace.
Let me start by saying: Eddie Mutwe is alive. That is the only good news I can share.
What I saw broke me.
Eddie is in immense pain. He was tortured in ways that defy humanity. He was electrocuted. They waterboarded him, shoved a cloth into his mouth, tied it around his neck. They crushed his private parts with a baton. They handcuffed his arms and legs, then stepped on them until the metal dug into his flesh. And every day—every single day—they flogged him four times.
He told us that they gave him only one meal a day—just posho and beans. When he asked for water, they told him to drink the filthy water he was sitting in—water that had traces of blood.
To hide his screams during torture, they blasted loud music through a speaker in the room. And then, they forced him to wear a T-shirt with Museveni’s face. They put him at gunpoint and made him kneel, swear allegiance to Museveni and Muhoozi, and they recorded it all. They stripped him naked, shaved off his beard with violence, mocked him, laughed at his pain.
On the third day, Muhoozi Kainerugaba—Museveni’s own son—came in person. I say this with deep pain: Muhoozi participated in the torture. He looked Eddie, a man in chains, in the face and challenged him to a fight. A man in handcuffs!
One of the tormentors asked Eddie “Amagara?”—a Runyakore greeting meaning “How is life?” Eddie, not understanding the language, replied in Luganda. That alone got him another savage beating. They asked him more questions in Runyakore and punished him for not knowing the language. They spat in his face.
They beat his feet so much they swelled like he had elephantiasis. “It was like I had elephantiasis by the time I left that place,” he told us. Today, he still cannot walk without help.
They injected him with three unknown substances. After all the beatings, they forced him to do press-ups and frog jumps on those swollen legs.
He was kept in the basement of what looked like a fancy home before being moved to another military site. During interrogation, he was blindfolded and repeatedly asked, “Who are you to challenge Museveni?”
As he spoke, his mother, his wife, and his eight-month-old baby sat nearby. At one point, he broke down. He couldn’t say more. He told us he hasn’t slept properly since. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees their faces—his torturers. Their laughter. Their boots.
Eddie Mutwe should not be in prison. He should be in a hospital. None of our comrades should be in prison. They committed no crime.
What was done to him is not just a crime against one man—it is a crime against humanity.
And yet, this is what Museveni’s regime does to those who dare to speak out.
Uganda, the world must hear this. The time to end this brutality is now.
