An Irish High Court judge has declined Lawyer Fred Muwema’s request to order Facebook to reveal the pseudonym Tom Voltaire Okwalinga, or TVO; says ‘TVO’s bodily integrity or life might be under threat’.
According to NBS TV, the judge’s decision comes after he read an Amnesty International report on Uganda which highlighted ‘the arrest and charging of people who spoke out against the Ugandan government’.
Facebook fears that should Mr Muwema be furnished with the personal identification details of TVO, he will be easily coerced by government of Uganda to share the same and expose him to a den of lions who have persistently sniffed for his blood
Last year, TVO, in one of his Facebook posts, accused Mr Muwema of accepting bribes and staging his own office break-in during the filing of the electoral petition of his client Amama Mbabazi against the incumbent President Museveni. Mr Muwema request to reveal TVO’s identity was needed to sue him for defamation.
Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo recently blasted Facebook for what he said was, “escapism and trying too hard to drag government of Uganda in their case.”
Facebook breaks own rules for TVO’s safety
According to the TimesofUK, Facebook told the High Court that it would not reveal who posted as TVO, because there was evidence that doing so would pose a threat to the user’s life.
TVO has 101,000 Facebook followers in Uganda. The page is updated regularly with information criticising the government and other public figures.
“This is a very unusual position for Facebook. The company ordinarily takes the view that people post at their own risk,” Rossa Fanning, SC, representing Facebook, told the court yesterday.
TVO has been releasing series of classified government secrets.
April 2014, he posted secret tape that implicated Police IGP Kale Kayihura’s attempt to investigate and curtail Mbabazi’s underneath campaign to oust President Museveni in 2016 presidential elections.
From November 2015, TVO started posting on Facebook calling upon people to prepare for protest to reclaim “Uganda’s democracy from dictatorship” on December 15th, 2015.
When his Facebook followers challenged him to come out and reveal his identity as he was planning to lead a people to the journey to change, TVO responded saying that most Ugandans know him since he appears on TV and in newspapers.
“For long some people have called on TVO to come out in the open and lead the journey to change. These same people say at the same time that they don’t know who TVO is. Now what if TVO is well among you and lives and walks among you. It is possible that most Ugandans know who TVO is and have seen him on TV and newspapers and even on the streets. Come December 15th, the game will change,” he posted on Facebook on November 3oth 2014.
The Question still stands, who is Tom Voltaire Okwalinga???
