The political persecution against members of the National Unity Platform (NUP), a political party headed by former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, continues a year after the 2021 presidential elections.
Several Bobi Wine supporters have between 2020 and 2021 continued to disappear, others are arbitrarily arrested while some have turned up dead days after being abducted and tortured.
The latest to fall victim to this endless persecution of Bobi Wine supporters is Sarah Lukumi, a staunch NUP member, who is living in fear for life ever since she learnt that security operatives are hunting for her.
According to our sources, Lukumi is one of the very many NUP members who either fled the country or live in hiding for fear of being abducted in drones by armed men or being detained and tortured in safe houses around the country.
Her relatives reveal that Lukumi joined politics as a member of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and at the time she was supporting (Rtd) Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, who was the leading opposition leader then.
After Besigye contesting against President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and losing four times between 2001 and 2016, Lukumi joined Bobi Wine’s NUP, hoping he would bring about change but supporting him has since turned into hell on earth for many of his supporters.
Bobi Wine, who is the former Kyadondo East constituency legislator led several protests that included the one against the plan to amend the constitution to remove the presidential age limit of 75 years to pave the way for President Yoweri Museveni to stand for president in 2021.
He also led the protests against the social media tax that was latter scrapped by the same government that had instituted it.
Lukumi was one the many NUP (People Power) supporters that often joined the protests led by Bobi Wine and that was how security operatives identified as started trailing her, just like they did to others.
The trailing and stalking has since resulted into the torture, arrest and is some cases shooting dead of Bobi Wine supporters during broad day light.
For instance, in August 2018, Lukumi headed to Arua together with Bobi Wine and other NUP supporters to support their candidate Kasiano Wadri during the Arua Municipality by-elections but many of them were arrested, clobbered and others like Yassin Kawuma, who was Bobi’s driver were shot dead.
It is said that several NUP supporters who had gone to Arua with Bobi Wine went missing and have never been found to date, while others are still languishing in prisons around the country without being produced in courts.
Matters worsened when Bobi Wine’s bodyguard Frank Senteza was intentionally run over by a military truck in December 2020 as he and others campaigned for the NUP principal, while at the same time several others were being abducted by armed men in drones.
It is such atrocities that forced many NUP supporters to flee into hiding, among them Lukumi, who told relatives prior to fleeing that her life and that of her son were in danger.
Some of her relatives suspect that she could have fled to Canada for dear life after being stalked by strange people in Uganda who often called at weird hours threatening her, while at times they would stalk her home with intent to abduct her.
