Makerere University social researcher and political activist Dr Stella Nyanzi has been arrested from Wandegeya police station as she sought police protection for her protest march against Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) for failing to reinstate her back in office.
Nyanzi was suspended indefinitely from Makerere on March 31, 2017 by vice chancellor Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu on the orders of the appointments board chairman Bruce Balaba Kabaasa for attacking the First Lady and Education minister Janet Museveni on Facebook over 'incompetence to run the ministry.'
But a staff appeals tribunal that sat last month ordered Makerere to immediately reinstate Nyanzi, saying her suspension was both illegal and unlawful. Dr Nyanzi had apparently organized a protest walk to Makerere from Wandegeya police station to protest against the university's refusal to reinstate her back in office.
The spokesperson of the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) Vincent Sekate told the media that Nyanzi was arrested over her recent Facebook posts in which she attacked President Yoweri Museveni and his late mother.
Sekate said all along police has been looking for Nyanzi to make a statement about the Facebook posts that she made September 16, 2018, a day after Museveni's 74th birthday.
The post was crafted in vulgarity and seemingly targeted at the president's late mother Esteri Kokundeka. She followed the September 16 post with two others on September 18 and September 19.
In the posts, Nyanzi called on the dead Esteri to come take her son away because he's torturing and murdering Ugandans and looting the country's resources. She also attacked Esteri for raising and looking away as her son continues to cause suffering to Ugandans.
Police says it's investigating Nyanzi for allegedly alarming, annoying and ridiculing the person of the president contrary to section 24 of the Penal Code Act. The crime attracts a punishment of life imprisonment upon conviction.
In April 2017, she was charged at Buganda Road Magistrate's court for cyber harassment contrary Museveni 'a pair of buttocks'. She was at the time remanded to Luzira prison for two weeks and later released on bail.
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