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Following the arrest and reported torture of Ugandan novelist and government critic Kakwenza Rukirabashaija on 28 December 2021, a screenshot of a sinister tweet was posted on Facebook. The tweet appears to be from Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba . Kainerugaba is the son of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and the commander of land forces of the country’s military. The tweet in the screenshot reads : I want the arrest of @KakwenzaRukira to be a lesson to all those who think they can abuse me on social media and walk away scot free. Whereas we have freedom of speech in Uganda, there should be a limit. The screenshot was shared widely on social media, including here , here , here , here and here . But did Kainerugaba send this tweet? We checked. Tweet ‘fake’ says Uganda army director of information A search for the tweet on Twitter returned no results. But Kainerugaba did retweet a post from Christopher Magezi , the director of information in the Ugandan military. Magezi shared the screenshot circulating on social media, stamped Fake News in red. He captioned it: The reference by Kakwenza’s legal representatives to a bogus tweet (frame 1) is quite disgraceful. It only perpetuates the repulsive practice by some wayward elements in our society that forgery, disinformation & wanton abuse on social media is okay and without consequence. Sad! Magezi also told a Ugandan digital news platform that the tweet was fabricated. The news site Chimp Reports also fact-checked the claim and found it false. We could find no evidence Kainerugaba tweeted anything like it.
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