Susan Orlean at The New Yorker:
Probably the only people at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last week who were out on bail were Bobi Wine, the Ugandan politician and musician, and his wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi. Their presence was seemingly the result of some rather cynical political calculations. Once the film about Wine’s Presidential campaign, “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” was nominated for an Oscar, in the Best Documentary Feature category, the government of the authoritarian Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, was apparently in a pickle: If the government prevented Wine from travelling, his absence during the pre-Oscars festivities—not to mention the ceremony itself—would highlight its tireless campaign of harassment, torture, and detention against him. The alternative, of allowing Wine and Kyagulanyi to travel to Los Angeles and other cities, including London (where the film was nominated for a bafta), must have seemed the lesser of two evils. One day, Wine and Kyagulanyi were under house arrest in their home in Kampala, with three of their children, not sure if Museveni would drag Wine off to prison again, and a few days later they were in the Hilton. “I would sleep on the street and go without food to get attention for what’s going on in Uganda,” Wine said the other day. “Instead, I’m achieving that by sleeping in a nice bed in a nice hotel in Los Angeles. It’s very strange.”
more here.