In a powerful address at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, Ugandan Opposition Leader Bobi Wine has condemned the brutal regime of General Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist for 40 years.

Wine, who is in hiding after surviving a military raid on his home, detailed the escalating violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by Museveni’s government, including the murder of protesters, torture, and rape.

He accused the international community of abandoning Uganda and enabling the regime’s atrocities through inaction. Wine called for targeted sanctions against Museveni, his son Muhoozi, and other officials responsible for human rights violations.

“We are not seeking pity, but action,” Wine said. “We demand an end to the impunity and the restoration of democracy in Uganda.”

Wine’s speech highlighted the plinary situation in Uganda, where the military and police have been deployed to suppress dissent and opposition voices have been silenced.

Read full speech:

Distinguished guests, freedom fighters and human rights activists from all over the world. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my second time speaking at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, and I’m very grateful to the organizers for making it possible for me to speak to you today.

In 2022, I spoke about a country that I call home, Uganda, a nation of 50 million people living under the violent military dictatorship of General Yoweri Museveni, who has for 40 years twisted the law and used the military to stay in power.

I told you of how I ran for president against him in 2021. How it was the most violent political campaign yet and how he massacred hundreds of our people on the 18th and 19th of November 2020. How he shut down the internet on the eve of the election, imprisoned me inside my home for weeks and then declared himself winner of the 2021 presidential election.

Now it is 2026 and here I am again speaking to you at the Geneva Summit. Nothing has changed for the better, only going from bad to worse.

Despite what happened in 2021, we were driven by hope to give it another try. So in 2025, I announced that I was running for president again. For 112 days, I traveled across the country campaigning and the population turned up overwhelmingly.

Yet again, our campaigns were violently attacked. Our supporters were murdered. We were blocked from reaching many places and were also blocked from several media stations.

As usual, Museveni shut down the internet again. This time 3 days to the election. And what happened thereafter was not an election but a military operation.

The election was so rigged to the point that even at the polling station where Museveni voted, he got much more votes than the actual registered voters in the register.

Our polling agents in several places were arrested and whisked away. Several of our party officials were arrested and many abducted. Two female deputy presidents of our political party were abducted and held incommunicado in a military barracks for three weeks before being thrown into a prison where they are languishing right at this moment.

The military was deployed on our streets shooting on spot whoever dared to challenge the criminality. It was under these circumstances that yet again he declared himself winner of the election. This time with over 70% of the vote.

Right now I’m speaking to you while in hiding. This is because as soon as the election was finished, Museveni’s son, who is also chief of the Ugandan military, issued an order to take me to him dead or alive.

The military acted on his order and raided my home. They tortured my family members, humiliated and undressed my wife, accusing her of hiding me. Meanwhile, they were recording and taking pictures of her, which the military chief later on shared on Twitter and bragged about capturing my wife.

They also took over my home and surrounded it, and they are occupying my home as we speak right now. My wife and children had to flee the country for fear of their lives.

I am in hiding, but I don’t want to be in hiding. It was necessary though so I can stay alive and be able to speak to you right now. I’ve said it before and I say it again that I will resurface at the right time in my country.

I feel like the international community has abandoned us. They’ve ignored us and they’ve left us to the fate of dictators.

When I ran for president in 2021, Museveni and his thugs denied their crimes. They killed our people and denied it. They tortured people and denied it. They raided our houses and denied it.

Museveni has been a smart dictator because he puts on a suit, goes to the west and to the UN, speaks very nicely about democracy and human rights, but realistically he does not mean any of those.

He talks about our so-called human rights commission in Uganda. But the same person closed the UN human rights office in Uganda two years ago because they dared to question him about his atrocities. Now that is how he has been able to maintain a facade of democracy for 40 years and counting.

But now he is 83 years old and his 51-year-old son Muhoozi commands our military, the Uganda People’s Defense Forces—more like Uganda’s defense against his own people. And he’s effectively in charge.

And like his father, Muhoozi does not play the role of a good dictator. He openly and shamelessly says despicable things on social media. On Twitter, he openly confesses and brags about committing atrocities against the people of Uganda.

When he was summoned by Parliament, he called Parliament a house of clowns and fools, and he threatened to arrest all of them. He describes judges of the Supreme Court of Uganda as clowns in wigs. And he has threatened to crush all journalists that dare to criticize his actions.

In April last year, he abducted, detained, and tortured my close friend and bodyguard called Eddie Sebufu, also known as Eddie Mutwe. He later on posted on Twitter naked pictures of Eddie, boasting that Eddie Mutwe was in his basement learning his mother tongue.

Last month, he bragged about killing 22 of my friends and he said that he’s praying that I am the 23rd person for him to kill.

In other words, Museveni and his son no longer fear international retaliation for their crimes. They’ve been so emboldened by your lack of action.

They know that they can murder their own people, imprison them, torture them, remove their fingernails, push needles down their testicles, and nothing will happen to them.

Now, they’re using rape as a weapon. Boys and girls, men and women, people of all ages have reported being sexually assaulted by Muhoozi’s military. And it’s not rare. The majority of the people that they capture and unlawfully imprison have reported being raped, whether men or women.

It is no longer possible, ladies and gentlemen, for the international community to deny his violence and atrocities. It’s all over social media and today I am talking about it to you.

Now, this is our call to action.

The way I see it, if the international community continues to be complacent, then Uganda will go from bad to worse. Museveni’s military will massacre many more innocent Ugandans. You, ladies and gentlemen, in the Western world will be forced to grapple with millions of Ugandan refugees pouring into your countries. And maybe then the international community will come and commiserate with the people of Uganda just like they did after the genocide in Rwanda, but it was too late.

The second option is that the international community rises to the occasion. You stand by the values that you profess: democracy and human rights. You can rein in on Museveni and his son through targeted sanctions as well as financial and legal pressures.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ugandans are not seeking for pity. Ugandans are only seeking to see the world take action against the individuals that have violated their rights for far too long. Those that have abused democracy with impunity should be the starting point.

Please sanction these individuals. Sanction General Museveni. Sanction General Muhoozi. Sanction all the police and military officers that are responsible for gross human rights violations. Sanction those commanders. Sanction the judicial officers that have aided criminality through deliberately misinterpreting the law or skewing it. Those that normalize electoral fraud. Those that remand to prison suspects that should actually be sent to hospital.

Sanction these individuals because their combined efforts in the last election effectively give autocracy a blank check to rule over the people of Uganda for 5 years.

We call upon the international community to treat General Museveni exactly how they treated Idi Amin because Idi Amin did what he did to Ugandans for only 8 years. Museveni has done much worse to the people of Uganda and it has been for 40 years and counting.

Because of the inaction of the international community, Museveni’s mode of dictatorship and human rights violations is being seen as acceptable in the region and it must be stopped before it is exported to other countries in the region and in the continent.

We ask the international community not to recognize Museveni’s regime because it is not legitimate. Please terminate any forms of cooperation with this government because he is not legitimate.

On our end, as the people of Uganda, we are committed to nonviolent means of changing our country, nonviolent means of putting an end to this 40-year-old dictatorship.

And you can be sure that the people of Uganda will sooner or later free themselves because oppressed people cannot stay oppressed forever.

With your help, friends, with the help of the international community and development partners, we can change our country. We can liberate Uganda before it is too late.

I thank you for listening to me.

For God and my country.

PeoplePower