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Courts always caution themselves not to issue gag orders in a democracy like Uganda because they don’t like to be seen as gagging free speech.
Yet the high court a few days ago handed out one such gag order in order to curtail disinformation and hate speech operations by Dean Lubowa Saava, a blogging veteran journalist who in the last 15 years has had to be expelled from a number of media houses over extortion and professional misconduct.
He was chased from CBS, Ntv, Gwanga newspaper, Nbs and Bbs terefayina because of bad manners and extortionist tendencies.
After failing to work with all these corporate media houses, the hungry and angry Saava ended up with his own media outfit by the names of tv10 gano mazima which UCC is in the process of shutting down because their executive director Nyombi Thembo says its an illegal media operation.
As UCC investigates him after receiving almost 100 complaints from public and private citizens who have been victims of his hate speech and disinformation, Saava has just suffered a huge bombshell.
This is in form of a gag order high court judge Dr. Douglas Karekona Singiza has issued directing him to immediately stop his fake news, disinformation and hate speech operations targeting innocent and vulnerable citizens especially those who are unwilling to pay up to preserve their peace.
The judiciary says that Saava’s gag order, similar to what the US court system has been using to contain Donald Trump against attacking individual court officers like judges and lawyers, will be in force for 30 days subject to being extended.
And the judiciary says that the gag order its meant to protect innocent citizens of Uganda who Saava has been attacking under the false hope that they will get intimidated into giving him a lot of money to keep quiet and stop attacking them using youtube and tiktok.
The gag order by judge Singiza was given under a large civil suit file that was instituted in the same court against Saava-civil suit no. 574 of 2024 and miscellaneous application no. 1314 of 2024.
There are many other suits targeting Saava which have been filed in the same court, including the one of Joel Ssenyonyi and that of prisons under secretary Samuel Emiku etc.
Other defamation suits on Saava have been put up by government officials working in electoral commission. And Uganda communications commission UCC has come up with a list of innocent Ugandans who financial gratifications-seeking Saava has been defaming in the last few months.
They are like this-Julius Kaketo the MD post bank, some bosses of Uganda police force, UNRA boss Allen Kagina, PPDA bosses, works & transport ministry bosses, Hon Emily Kugonza, Hon Harriet Busingye, contractor Lutaya Alex and professor Badru Kateregga who is also the owner of Kampala University in Ggaba
In the UCC document tendered in court by some lawyers in order to show their case of the public terror machine that Saava has become, its indicated that all these victims of hate speech and disinformation have hired lawyers to take on Saava by way of putting up criminal and civil cases against him.
He will need hundreds of millions of shillings to hire enough lawyers and to also prepare to pay damages and court costs after losing all these cases.
The judges and courts of Uganda these days are very willing to protect victims of hate speech and disinformation because they know and are convinced that with social media bullies like Server, no one is safe.
This is why the judges give generous awards of damages and costs against media publishers as was the case in the Bigirimana daily monitor case and many others involving the late red pepper. Server will most likely lose many of his court cases and end up like red pepper or Teddy Seezi Cheeye of many years ago.
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