The wife of detained Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye said on Sunday she was "very worried" about his health, nearly a week after the ex-presidential candidate began a hunger strike.
Besigye, 68, is a leading opponent of the country's President Yoweri Museveni – in power for nearly 40 years – whom he has unsuccessfully challenged in four elections.
On trial for "threatening national security", Besigye went on hunger strike on February 10 to protest his detention, with his lawyer describing him as "critically ill."
"He's not been eating, he's only drinking water," his wife, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima, told AFP on Sunday on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
'Frail and dehydrated'
"He says it's his only act of protest at the illegal detention that he's being put through."
When Besigye was last seen in public, during a court appearance on Friday, "he looked very frail and dehydrated," she said.
She added that she was "very worried about his condition now."
Besigye was abducted in Kenya in November, and has been facing the death penalty on treason charges in a court martial.
'A fight for justice'
Museveni rejected last month's supreme court ruling that civilians should not be tried in military courts.
Byanyima has previously labelled the trial a "sham".
"I am in a fight for justice," she told AFP.
"If this happens to him, that he continues to be held illegally, that some trumped-up process is used to convict him, this is not just about him, it's about the fate of democracy and the rights of Ugandans," she said.
Concern voiced
The UN and several rights organisations have voiced their concern about the suppression of the political opposition in Uganda in the run-up to the 2026 presidential elections.
Rights group Amnesty International branded Besigye's case a "travesty of justice."
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