His bestselling novel The Stingy Barbarian describes a fictional country ravaged by corruption. A barely veiled criticism of the Ugandan regime. But the author was in the authorities' crosshairs for tweets mocking the president's son. "Armed men are breaking down my door. They say they are police but are not in uniform. I have locked myself inside," the writer posted on his Facebook page.

A sign of increasingly intense repression, this arrest did not surprise Nicholas Opiyo, a Ugandan human rights lawyer in exile in the United States. "The government has succeeded in preventing political parties and the population from protesting physically. Now they are taking care of intellectual repression. Independent-minded people who express their ideas in universities or online are victims of intolerant attacks," he testified to RFI.

But for the human rights lawyer, beyond the individual, it is "freedom of thought and expression" that is targeted by this arrest. "This is why attacks against online activists have become increasingly frequent in recent years. The regime is less concerned with staying in power than with protecting the president's family. Many of the people arrested for online activism had criticized members of the presidential family," he concluded.