Uganda Frees Six Anti-Oil Activists on Bail After Weeks

Six young anti-oil activists in Uganda were released on cash bail last week after spending more than two weeks in Luzira Maximum Security Prison. The LDC Magistrate's Court in Kampala granted each of them bail of Shs300,000 on Thursday, September 17, the latest turn in a long confrontation between the country's youth climate movement and the state over the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.

All six belong to Rooted in Resistance, a youth movement that campaigns against Uganda's oil development, especially the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. According to Witness Radio, the activists had been held in Luzira Maximum Security Prison since their arrest on August 31, 2026, when they took part in demonstrations in Kampala against the country's ongoing fossil fuel projects. They were charged with unlawful assembly under the Penal Code Act, a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in prison on conviction.

Their names are Isaac Mukiibi, Alphat Mawanda, Nicholas Mugezi, Innocent Opio, John Friday and Ronald Onyango. On the day of their arrest, they were part of a group of 16 activists who tried to deliver petitions to Parliament and to the offices of TotalEnergies in Kampala, urging closer scrutiny of Uganda's oil projects and a rejection of further fossil fuel investment. The group, formerly known as Students Against EACOP, has grown into one of the most persistent youth voices against the pipeline.

The protest that landed them in prison

Police detained 16 anti-oil activists during the demonstrations on August 31. Ten were arrested at Parliament and charged with being a nuisance on a public road. The other six were picked up outside the TotalEnergies offices at RR Pearl Tower One on Yusuf Lule Road, where they had gone to deliver their petition, and were charged with unlawful assembly.

The ten arrested at Parliament appeared before the Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court on September 1, where Grade One Magistrate Rophine Acayo remanded them to Luzira Prison until September 18 for mention of the case and hearing of their bail applications. All ten denied the charge of causing a nuisance on a public road, which prosecution says was committed when they assembled on King George Way Street in Kampala Central around 9 a.m. and placed themselves in the road in a way that caused danger or inconvenience to traffic.

According to Uganda Radio Network, the charge sheet described the youths wearing orange T-shirts bearing the words "Rooted in Resistance" and carrying placards opposing oil development. The messages on the placards read "Prioritize Other Sectors of the Economy," "Oil is Temporary, Nature is Permanent," and "Oil Today, Problems Tomorrow." The ten accused are all residents of Kampala and Wakiso districts, ranging in age from 20 to 26, and include a painter, a salon worker, a casual worker, a builder, a mechanic, a student, a tailor, a shopkeeper and a businesswoman.

The six who were granted bail last week were held separately on the unlawful assembly charge, which under Section 65(1) of the Penal Code Act covers gatherings of three or more people that intend to commit an offense or create a reasonable fear of a breach of the peace. Rooted in Resistance celebrated their release on its X account but condemned what it called a pattern of harassment. "We will never be intimidated by the continued trumped-up charges and the brutal arrests being subjected to us," the group said in a statement after the release, pledging to keep rallying for an oil-free economy and what it calls true economic freedom.

A pipeline, and a pattern

The pipeline at the center of the dispute is the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a project launched in 2021 that would transport crude from Uganda's Albertine region to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. It has been controversial from the start, with disputes over delayed payments to people displaced by the project and secrecy around the host government agreement, the tariff and transportation agreement and the shareholding agreement signed between Uganda and Tanzania. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has indicated the project will go ahead as planned, even after the European Union passed a resolution calling for a halt to extractive activities in protected ecosystems connected to the pipeline.

The latest arrests fit a pattern. Uganda Radio Network noted this is not the first group of protesters sent to Luzira by the Buganda Road Court over EACOP demonstrations. In May 2026, the High Court in Kampala ordered the government to pay 40 million shillings in general damages to four environmental activists who were unlawfully detained beyond the constitutional 48-hour limit after an anti-EACOP protest. Civil Division Judge Collins Acellam found the state had violated the activists' fundamental right to personal liberty, awarding each of them 10 million shillings. Those four, Alphonse Nkurunziza, Vicent Lubega Nsamba, Gerald Wenani and David Musiri, are also members of Rooted in Resistance.

International observers have been watching the pattern too. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, run by the International Federation for Human Rights, has condemned the conviction of earlier Stop EACOP youth activists and urged the Ugandan authorities to drop charges against detained climate defenders. The activists themselves say their resistance is driven by concern for the environmental and social fallout of oil development, especially its impact on communities, livelihoods and the natural world. They want Uganda to invest in renewable energy instead of pouring more resources into fossil fuel infrastructure.

For now, the six freed anti-oil activists are out of Luzira, but their cases continue, and the ten held on the nuisance charge were due back in court for their own bail applications. The placards the group carried asked for an oil-free future; the petitions they carried asked the same thing on paper.