Makerere don Dr. Stella Nyanzi has appeared before the Buganda Road Magistrates court to answer charges of cyber harassment and offensive communication.
Nyanzi who uses her Facebook page to speak out against the ills of the regime in rather explicit language was arrested last Friday evening after addressing a rotary gathering at MacKinnon Suites about the need to fundraise sanitary pads for school girls. She was held at Kira Division Police.
She started the sanitary pads campaign after the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports Mrs Janet Museveni appeared before Parliament saying that government didn’t have money to provide sanitary pads for school girls.
Nyanzi was irked by Janet’s remarks and took to her Facebook page to denounce Janet as a “mother”. She was called to CID for interrogation over cyber harassment and offensive communication.
She was also stopped from flying out to Netherlands to deliver a lecture at University of Amsterdam.
The First Lady in a televised interview said she didn’t know where Nyanzi’s anger was coming from and said she had forgiven her.
Janet could clearly have forgiven her as she is not sighted in Nyanzi’s charge sheet.
In the cyber harassment charge which contravenes the 2011 Computer Misuse Act, the particulars read as follows:
“Stella Nyanzi on the 28th January 2017 at Kampala District or thereabout used a computer to post on her Facebook page “Stella Nyanzi” wherein she made a suggestion or proposal referring to His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as among other things “a pair of buttocks,” which suggestion/proposal is obscene or indecent.”
In the Offensive Communication charge, Nyanzi was faulted for using Facebook to post messages of offensive nature to disturb the peace, quiet or right to privacy of President Museveni with no purpose of legitimate communication.
Nyanzi is represented by Human Rights lawyer Nichiolas Opiyo.