Dr Stella Nyanzi on Friday bared her breasts and screamed obscenities in protest as a magistrate sentenced her to 18 months’ prison on controversial charges of “harassing” President Yoweri Museveni.
The verdict against Nyanzi drew the ire of rights activists who accused the government of using laws about electronic communications to stifle political dissent.
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.
She was acquitted of a charge of offensive communication. Having already spent nine months behind bars, Nyanzi is expected to remain in prison for a further nine months.
The poem, posted on 16 September, the day after Museveni’s 74th birthday, suggested the president should have died at birth and accused him of corroding “all morality and professionalism out of our public institutions in Uganda”.
In Kampala on Thursday evening, magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu branded the poem “offensive and vulgar”.
“The use of obscenity cannot be justified in any society,” Kamasanyu said. “It didn’t matter who the post was referring to.”
Asked if she wanted to address the court in an attempt to reduce her sentence, Nyanzi replied: “Send me to Luzira [maximum security prison]. I am proud [of what] I told a dirty, delinquent dictator.”
She added: “I want to embolden the young people … I want them to use their voices and speak whatever words they want to speak.”
The court in Kampala was packed with activists, members of parliament, pressure groups, and leaders from different political parties.
Appearing in a Kampala court via video link, Nyanzi raised her middle fingers and yelled profanities in defiance as she was sentenced, before flashing her breasts as her supporters whooped and cheered.
A plastic bottle was hurled at the magistrate as police tried to restore order.
Who is Stella Nyanzi?
Born 16 June 1974, Dr Nyanzi is a Ugandan medical anthropologist, feminist, queer rights activist, and scholar of sexuality, family planning, and public health.
She received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Literature at Makerere University where she studied from 1993 to 1996.
She received her Master of Science in Medical Anthropology at University College London, where she studied from 1999 to 2000.
Nyanzi also received her PhD in Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she studied social anthropology, sexuality, and youth and health policy from 2003 to 2008. She has conducted research on youth sexuality in Uganda, and also in The Gambia in 2005.
Nyanzi began her career in 1997 as a Social Science Research Associate at the Medical Research Council (UK) Programme in Uganda ,where she worked until September 2002.
She then received a new position working as Local Anthropologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratories, The Gambia, where she worked for one year. She left that position to pursue her PhD in London.
In 2009, Stella Nyanzi began at Makerere University as a Researcher at the Law, Gender & Sexuality Research Project, as a member of the Faculty of Law, where she worked until December 2013. She then worked as a Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research until 2016. While there, she was asked to lecture in the new PhD programme, called the Mamdani PHD Project, but declined. Her office was closed and, in an example of the West African feminist cultural practice of what the scholar Naminata Diabate has called “naked agency,” made a nude protest against her boss.
After her arrest in 2017, she was suspended from Makerere University. She appealed the decision with Makerere University’s appeal tribunal, which directed that she be reinstated, promoted to the level of a research fellow with immediate effect, and paid back wages. The university refused to abide by its tribunal’s decision. So, she filed a lawsuit against the university requesting reinstatement and back wages.In response, in December 2018, the university dismissed her, along with 45 other academics, arguing that her contract expired.
Nyanzi has also done consultation work for various social research organizations outside of Uganda and The Gambia.
In March 2017, Nyanzi referred to President Museveni as “a pair of buttocks.”
On 7 April 2017, she was arrested and detained by police at Kiira Police Station on charges of cyber harassment and offensive communication.
On 10 April 2017, she was thereafter produced in court, where she was charged with the misuse of a computer, cyber harassment, and abusing the president under section 24, and 25 of the Computer Misuse Act of 2011. She was then remanded to Luzira Prison.
On 11 April 2017, doctors from Butabika Hospital were asked to carry out a psychiatric assessment examination to determine whether she was insane, as the government prosecutor was alleging. However, she resisted the examination and requested that her personal doctor and at least one family member should be present if they want to carry out a medical test on her.
On 10 May 2017, she was released on a non cash 10 million Ugandan shillings.
Nyanzi was again on 2 November, 2018 arrested after posting a poem on Facebook that the state deemed abusive towards Museveni and his late mother. She was remanded to Luzira over offensive communication and cyber harassment charges.
The poem, posted on 16 September, the day after Museveni’s 74th birthday, suggested the president should have died at birth and accused him of corroding “all morality and professionalism out of our public institutions in Uganda”.
Additional information from Wikipedia
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