A court in Uganda sentenced a young TikTok user to two years and eight months in prison on Monday. convicted of hate speech. The man had been accused of using the social network to insult the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986.
“I hope jail time will help him learn that insulting other people to make content on the social media is a bad thing,” Judge Stella Maris Amabilis of the Entebbe Court said in announcing the sentence. The convicted man, Emmanuel Nabugodi, 21, pleaded guilty to his charges, but pleaded for clemency. to the court.
“I thought I was making comedic content like other people do in Tiktokjust for fun. I was not aware of the consequences of my actions,” Nabugodi said. In his video, the young man complained that Museveni had been ruling his country for so long and demanded that he leave power because he is not Ugandan, reviving old, unconfirmed rumors that he was born in neighboring Rwanda.
“The accused also asked us to remove the president’s pants and beat him 20 times with a stick for playing games with us,” said state prosecutor Paul Aheebwa Byamukama last week, who went as far as seeking seven years in prison for the young man. Also on Wednesday, Amabilis ordered the remand of three other youths in custody.David Ssengozi, Julius Tayebwa and Isaiah Ssekagiri, accused of using TikTok to insult the Ugandan president and his family.
This is not the first time that a TikTok user has been sent to jail for his criticism against the Government of Uganda. Already on July 10, the Entebbe Court sentenced a 25-year-old Tiktok user, Edward Awebwa, to six years in prison for insulting Museveni and his family on that social network. Amabilis found him guilty of hate speech and spreading malicious information. against the Ugandan president.
Museveni, 80, has been president of Uganda since 1986. He was re-elected in January 2021. after an election period marked by the disappearance of hundreds of opposition supporters, protests dispersed with ammunition by security forces and at least 54 protesters killed.