Kabarole NUP supporters, Tumugonza Abraham & Asobora Jordan, remain unaccounted for despite continued demands to release political prisoners

The leading opposition political party, the National Unity Platform (NUP), continues to push for the unconditional release of its supporters from state prisons and torture chambers.

While the government maintains it is holding no member of NUP other than those who have been produced in the military courts, party leaders maintain hundreds of their supporters are being held incommunicado.

Claims of missing persons due to related political activism are spread across the country, especially urban centres where NUP, led by Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka Bobi Wine, continues to get support.

In Fort Portal, the capital of Kabarole District, two young men remain unaccounted for after recently being arrested by police. The young supporters of Bobi Wine and NUP are siblings Tumugonza Abraham and Asobora Jordan, who are residents of Rwengoma, a suburb in Fort Portal town.

Efforts by family and friends to locate Tumugonza Abraham and his brother remain fruitless, with local authorities – including police and the military – maintaining that the two are not in their custody, at least not in their jurisdiction.

Abasa Richard, a friend and former schoolmate of Tumugonza, describes the two missing persons as firebrands in NUP who were becoming pivotal in the reorganisation of the party.

“It is only normal, with the way things are, that young men are dissenting against the regime and are yearning for political change. This is what we are pushing. This is why youths like Asobora Jordan and Tumugonza Abraham are paying the price,” Abasa, a university dropout, told journalists.

Adding: “It is possible that my friends are in military detention. That is where everyone missing says he has been when he reappears. Our leader Bobi Wine and the party are pushing for their release. The problem is we don’t know the exact number of people detained. They arrest some today; they release others tomorrow.”

Bobi Wine and party leaders have involved parliament and the Uganda Human Rights Commission to have the regime release political prisoners, but they haven’t yielded tangible results. Relatives of the missing persons have engaged the government at individual levels and got no help.

National Unity Platform claims some supporters have been in detention since their arrest early in 2021, after the disputed presidential elections that pitted Bobi Wine against President Yoweri Museveni. The rise of Bobi Wine saw many young men and women come out to vote for change that would bring an end to Museveni’s rule.