Rwanda just lost another exiled critic to a brutal killing in Uganda
1 hour ago · 20 October 2026Share
A view of Kampala from the top of one of the hills on the outskirts of the city. File photo. Michael Shade at English Wikipedia · Public domain
A man has been found beheaded outside Kampala, Uganda. He is Robert Kabera, 50, a former Rwandan army sergeant major who became one of President Paul Kagame's loudest online critics.
Residents found his body a few days ago in Luwala, a village near Kampala. Police think he was killed late on 16 October or in the early hours of 17 October.
His head still hasn't been found.
Kituuma Rusoke, a Ugandan police officer, says relatives have identified the body as Robert Kabera. Police are treating it as murder.
So who was he?
Kabera ran a YouTube channel called Major Robert TV. 144,000 people subscribed to it. More than 800 videos, most of them going after Kagame and his government. One video has a song praising Victoire Ingabire, an opposition figure who's been jailed again and again in Rwanda, and one of the only people left there who still speaks out.
Here's the thing. Kabera wasn't outspoken at all while he was still in the Rwandan military.
He fled the country years ago. He asked Uganda for asylum, saying he was being politically persecuted. Why he actually fled is disputed. One wire report says he was declared a fugitive and accused of corrupting a minor, which he denied. Other outlets say the allegation was sexual assault. Rwanda has never confirmed either version.
Victor Agaba, Kabera's brother, told AFP his brother had no problems with anyone in Uganda. He says quote "The army created a criminal case against him. It was a witch hunt."
That's Kabera's own family saying the case against him was built back in Rwanda, not anything he did in exile.
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Contains modified European Space Agency Envisat ASAR data showing the Ugandan capital Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria. File photo.European Space Agency · CC BY-SA 3.0 igo
According to his family, Kabera had gone to check on a construction site about 45 kilometres outside Kampala just before he died.
Jeanne d'Arc Rwigema Uwizeye, his widow, told the BBC she's scared for her family now. She says quote "I feel crazy, the children and I don't have security."
That's a widow saying the danger didn't end when her husband died.
Rwanda's government hasn't said one word about any of this.
And Kabera isn't the first Rwandan exile to die like this.
In 2014, Patrick Karegeya, a former Rwandan intelligence chief who helped found the opposition Rwanda National Congress, was strangled in a hotel room in Johannesburg. He'd fallen out with Kagame years earlier. He'd served 18 months in prison for insubordination and desertion before fleeing to South Africa in 2007. South Africa issued arrest warrants in 2019 for two Rwandans over his murder.
In 2021, Seif Bamporiki, another outspoken Kagame critic, was shot dead in South Africa. The same year, Revocat Karemangingo, a former lieutenant in the Rwandan army, was shot dead in Mozambique, suspected of quietly backing an armed opposition group. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a former Rwandan general who co-founded the RNC with Karegeya, is still alive, still in exile, and has survived several attempts on his life.
Paul Kagame has run Rwanda since 2000. He held real power behind the government even before that, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, when 800,000 people were killed, most of them from the minority Tutsi community.
So what don't we know? Whether Rwandan state agents had anything to do with Kabera's death. Ugandan police haven't named any suspects. And nobody has explained why his head is still missing.
Here's what we do know. A man spent years criticising Kagame on YouTube from exile in Uganda. Now he's dead, decapitated, and Rwanda's government hasn't said a word.
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