Uganda troops shut down Daily Monitor operations

Soldiers shut down operations at Uganda’s Daily Monitor in Kampala on Sunday after an order by Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the country’s top military commander and the eldest son of President Yoweri Museveni. According to The Independent, troops were deployed outside the newspaper’s offices as Kainerugaba warned that “all media in Uganda will follow the rules.” The directive also targeted NTV, with the National Association of Broadcasters saying at least six publishing and broadcasting outlets under the same ownership were closed.

The affected outlets sit inside Nation Media Group, a regional company headquartered in Nairobi that has been one of East Africa’s most influential independent media businesses. In Uganda, that reach makes it an obvious chokepoint: closing a single corporate group can remove multiple newsrooms, broadcast channels and distribution pipelines at once. Kainerugaba’s own explanation was not procedural. He wrote on X that he has the power in Uganda to shut down any media house he wants, and that the authority was given to him by his father.

The timing matters. Museveni has just been sworn in for a seventh consecutive term, and Kainerugaba—who has been the top military commander since 2024—has increasingly issued directives that would normally be associated with the head of state, the report says. Museveni, in power since 1986 and now 81, has not said when he will retire, and has no rivals inside the ruling party. In that environment, the question of succession is not only electoral; it is also about who controls the security services that can decide which organisations are allowed to operate.

The closure order lands on top of a recent pattern of coercion directed at critics and legal challengers. The Independent notes that earlier this month Kainerugaba retaliated against an attorney who sought to hold him accountable for alleged rights violations against opposition figure Kizza Besigye, who was seized in Nairobi in 2024 and has since been imprisoned on treason charges he says are politically motivated. When legal accountability becomes a security matter, media scrutiny becomes a liability for the same institutions that enforce the rules.

Nation Media Group’s Ugandan newsrooms were still there, physically, with soldiers outside. What changed in a single morning was who publicly claimed the right to decide whether they could work at all.