Uganda Today Edition: Uganda’s Dead Hen: A Nation That Dies to Protect Its Young
By Uganda Today News Desk
www.ugandatoday.co.ug | May 9, 2025
An image now making rounds on social media shows a lifeless hen—its feathers bloodied and its body sprawled in the dust—while its chicks cling to the stillness of her carcass, unaware that their protector has breathed her last. In rural allegory, the image is simple. In Uganda’s political context, it is chillingly prophetic.
This image is not just a coincidence of nature—it is a metaphor for Uganda’s opposition struggle: a country where protectors of the vulnerable are ruthlessly silenced, and the system they resist moves on undeterred. Today, in 2025, Uganda stands like that dead hen—its wings broken by repression, yet its people still looking up in defiant innocence, believing in safety that no longer exists.
The Death That Lurks Behind Political Dissent
Since 1986, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s rule has increasingly devolved from revolutionary promise to repressive permanence. And nowhere is this more evident than in the relentless violence meted out against opposition voices—especially those aligned with the National Unity Platform (NUP) and its leader, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine.
The most recent and jarring example is the abduction and torture of Eddie Mutwe, Bobi Wine’s chief bodyguard. In April 2025, Mutwe was reportedly snatched by plainclothes operatives in a covert operation eerily reminiscent of countless past abductions. After days, Muhoozi Keinerugaba- the Chief of Defence forces and president Museveni’s son, revealed that he is the one who “arrested Eddie Mutwe like a grasshopper”. He further gloated that he was “in his basement learning Runyankore”. Following hue and cry from international community including but not limited to Geneva based Human Rights Body and local voices, Eddie Mutwe was produced in Lwengo Court—bruised, broken, and traumatized, his body bearing unmistakable signs of torture.
A Catalog of Repression: Names and Graves
Eddie Mutwe joins a long and tragic list of Ugandans who have suffered for daring to oppose the state:
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Ritah Nabukenya, an NUP supporter, was run over by a police truck in 2020 in Nakawa. Her death was branded an accident by authorities, but eyewitnesses say it was deliberate.
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Francis Senteza, another of Bobi Wine’s close aides, was reportedly killed by military police in Kalangala during the 2020 campaign trail.
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Yasin Kawuma, Bobi Wine’s driver, was shot dead in Arua in August 2018 in an attack widely believed to have targeted the opposition leader himself.
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Michael Kalinda (DJ Fikie) and others like him were abducted, tortured and dumped in forests or remote police stations, often without trial or charge.
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Muhammad Ssegirinya and Allan Ssewanyana, elected Members of Parliament from the opposition, were incarcerated for over two years under murky terrorism charges, allegedly for crimes the state failed to convincingly prove in court.
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Dozens of NUP supporters remain missing to date, victims of what activists and human rights groups describe as “enforced disappearances.”
From Drone Vans to Torture Chambers
The infamous “drones”—unmarked vans used by security forces to abduct Ugandans without arrest warrants—have become a tool of fear. Those taken in these vans are often held in illegal detention centers, euphemistically called “safe houses,” where torture is reportedly routine.
Human rights watchdogs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented these violations, but justice remains elusive. A 2023 report by Chapter Four Uganda detailed over 300 cases of enforced disappearances during the 2021 electoral season alone—most of which remain unresolved.
An Economy of Fear and Silence
What is perhaps most disturbing is the normalization of brutality. With each incident, public outrage fades faster, as Ugandans grow accustomed to the rhythm of repression. From the closure of media houses to the gagging of civil society organizations, the state’s machinery does not simply aim to punish—it aims to make forgetting a civic duty.
Even legal redress is a mirage. The courts, increasingly perceived as extensions of executive power, have failed to deliver justice in cases involving state violence. Families of victims are silenced, paid off, or harassed into retreat. Journalists who report on torture and abductions are targeted, while activists are jailed on trumped-up charges.
The Mother Hen as Metaphor
In the image of the dead hen lies a story we refuse to fully acknowledge. Like that hen, Uganda’s opposition leaders and supporters have laid down their lives—sometimes literally—to protect democratic ideals. Yet, like the chicks, the nation perches atop their bodies, vulnerable still, yet blind to the danger.
Will the next bullet find another Kawuma? Will the next drone van swallow another Mutwe? Or will the people wake up to the fragility of their freedoms?
How Many More Must Die for Change to Be Real?
Uganda must reckon with itself. The international community must stop applauding a faux stability built on blood. And Ugandans—especially those outside the NUP base—must ask: What happens when repression comes for us all?
Until then, the image of the hen and her chicks will haunt us—a symbol of sacrificial love in the face of state-engineered cruelty.
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