“I am not speaking to you as an expert on human rights law. Far from that, I’m just an ordinary citizen of the world born and raised in the biggest slum of Uganda, the ghetto of Kamwokya. That’s where I come from. My passion to fight for freedom was indeed not born out of the classroom… It was born out of the streets, out of my experience from growing up out of the poorest of the poorest in Uganda and those are the people who face the worst human rights violations in my country Uganda….I know many of you have come to know about me out of my experience of torture, repression and abuse of my rights but the authorities in Uganda and the military in my country. While I am grateful for the attention, I must assert it that my own experience, however nasty it was, is nothing compared to what very men and women go through every day in my country. Many have been arrested. Many have disappeared and indeed many have had to pay the ultimate price. So while I am very lucky to be standing before you ladies and gentlemen, I must inform the world that another activist—an academic giant, a woman, Dr. Stella Nyanzi, continues to rot in jail, continues to be incarcerated, simply because she wrote a poem that criticizes President Museveni who has been president of Uganda for 33 years.”
HE Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) speaking today at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition Annual Conference in Chicago