Opposition leader Besigye, who is in jail in Uganda, is on a hunger strike, according to his wife

A well-known opposition leader in Uganda is being tried by a military court and has started a hunger strike, according to his wife. This comes two weeks after the country’s highest court martial stopped trying civilians.

President Yoweri Museveni said that his government would still use military courts to try people even though the Supreme Court had said otherwise. A jails official in Uganda said that Kizza Besigye was not on hunger strike.

Museveni’s longtime opponent Besigye was arrested in nearby Kenya in November. A top Kenyan foreign affairs official said it was like Besigye had been kidnapped.

He was then taken home and charged with illegally having guns and betraying someone, which is a capital crime.

Besigye’s wife Winnie Byanyima wrote on X late Tuesday night, “Kizza Besigye is on hunger strike because he is being held illegally by a regime that fears his defiance more than it respects the law.”

“They believe they can weaken his will, but they are wrong about how determined he is.” The head of the UN organization UNAIDS, Byanyima, said, “(Besigye) will not give up while the regime tramples on justice.”

According to Frank Baine, a spokesman for Uganda’s jails, the claim about her husband was false. He told Reuters, “Besigye is OK and he is not on a hunger strike.”

Besigye was Museveni’s personal doctor during the bush war in the 1980s, but the two men afterward became angry with each other.

In four presidential races, Besigye ran against Museveni and lost all of them. He didn’t agree with the results of any of those votes, saying that there were problems that the officials ignored.

A lot of people who work for human rights say that Museveni’s government violates those rights, including by torturing people and detaining them without a reason. Accusations of election fraud and rights violations have been rejected over and over by the government.