The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Prominent female academic and activist Stella Nyanzi is “doing very well” at Luzira prison and is already involved in teaching English to inmates, her lawyer Nicholas Opiyo has said.
Opiyo told BBC today that Nyanzi is teaching English in her spare time at Uganda’s Luzira Prison where she is in custody pending a bail hearing on April 25.
“She is doing very well, she is in good mood, she is teaching in prison…and she is happy,” Opiyo said early today. “She saw this coming. She was mentally prepared for this,”Opiyo added.
“Dr. Nyanzi is within her constitutional rights and we are for an all-out legal battle with the state to defend her rights,” Opio said earlier.
Opiyo told BBC that he thinks Nyanzi could still be charged with another offence, related to raising funds in the public without permission.
Dr Stella Nyanzi has been charged with cyber-harassment and offensive communication for using her Facebook posts to disturb President Yoweri’s Museveni’s privacy, which she denies.
@nickopiyo – Good morning buddy! Just seen that we’ll be talking about Dr. Stella Nyanzi shortly! (#BBCNewsday 101.3 FM in Kampala)
— Alan Kasujja (@kasujja) April 14, 2017
University lecturer Nyanzi, 42, has raised eyebrows in the conservative country for sexually explicit social media posts in which she has frequently criticised the president and his wife.
She has lashed out at Janet Museveni, who is also education minister, after the government reneged on a campaign to supply free sanitary pads to poor schoolgirls and has launched vitriolic attacks against the first couple.
Nyanzi appeared in a court in Kampala on Monday, where she was charged with making a remark that was “obscene or indecent.”
The charge sheet referred to a Facebook post on January 28 “where she made a suggestion or proposal referring (to) His Excellency, Yoweri Museveni as among others, ‘a pair of buttocks’.”
There was no reference to any charge for insults to the first lady.
Nyanzi, whose work specialises in the study of sexuality in Africa, shot to prominence in April 2016 when she stripped naked at her university to protest the closure of her office. She later shared the nude photos of herself on social media.
Nyanzi is often accused by commentators on her page of missing a chance to make an impact on serious issues through her regular use of graphic sexual imagery and descriptions.
**Additional reporting by AFP
The COMPUTER MISUSE ACT 2011
Computer Misuse Act by The Independent Magazine on Scribd
Public Collections Act 1966 by The Independent Magazine on Scribd
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editor@independent.co.ug
