Ugandan Student Sues President Museveni For Blocking Him On Twitter

How often does one get blocked on social media for passing dissenting opinions or comments which may be deemed derogatory? And when that happens, what is one to do?

Well, a Ugandan student living in the US has decided to sue President Yoweri Museveni for blocking him on Twitter after he referred to him as “a dictator” and said he had to go.

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In the lawsuit, Hillary Innocent Taylor Seguya, a global youth ambassador and master’s student of international relations at Harvard University, contends that by blocking him on Twitter, Museveni bars him from online conversation. It leaves him unable to see or respond to tweets on the president’s official handle, @KagutaMuseveni, used as a public forum to disseminate information relating to the activities of his public office in his official capacity and to get feedback from citizens.

Seguya has petitioned the civil division of the high court in the capital, Kampala, to declare Museveni’s action as illegal, procedurally improper, unreasonable and irrational. His Twitter account, @HillaryTaylorVI, is blocked from following, viewing, contacting, liking, tagging and retweeting the tweets on the president’s account.

On 30 July 2019, he says Museveni or his aides blocked his account, without notice or affording the applicant a hearing – infringing his right against discrimination as guaranteed in the constitution, his freedom of speech and expression, and his right to participate in the affairs of government and peaceful activities to influence the policies of government.

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Government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo and the director of political commissariat at Uganda’s police force, Asan Kasingye, who blocked Seguya on 8 August and 20 July respectively, are also named in the lawsuit.

In his legal complaint, filed on Monday, Seguya said: “The[ir] actions did not protect my freedom against political persecution and [restricted my] rights, which are acceptable and demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society.”

Male Mabirizi Kiwanuka, who filed the petition on his behalf, said Seguya could have been blocked by the president, or his aides, after a critical post he made in April, in which he told the Ghanaian president, Nana Akufo-Addo, that he would rather have him as president than Museveni.

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“I wish we could exchange you for our Ugandan president dictator, General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has been for 33 years,” said Seguya after Akufo-Addo made a presentation on Pan-Africanism to a group of students at Harvard University.

Kiwanuka said that Seguya was not aware of any reason why Museveni, Ofwono Opondo and Kasingye blocked him. “We want the court to set aside what they did because he was not heard,” he said.

“We are only trying to guess – is it because [Seguya] asked Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana to substitute Museveni, who is a dictator for 33 years?” he said.

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“We are suing under the judicial review for court to review this decision. It was reached without fair hearing.”

The case comes less than a month after Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan women’s rights activist who branded Yoweri Museveni “a dirty, delinquent dictator” and “a pair of buttocks”, received an 18-month jail sentence for cyber harassment against the president. She was acquitted of a charge of offensive communication.

Nyanzi, a former researcher at Makerere University, was arrested on 2 November after posting a poem on Facebook that the state deemed abusive towards Museveni and his late mother.

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Don Wanyama, the senior press secretary to Museveni, said the president will only respond to Seguya’s lawsuit in court.