Where is Dr Lina Zedriga Waru Abuku, deputy president of Uganda’s leading opposition party, the National Unity Platform (NUP)? Until recently, she served as the party’s acting president and was a daily presence in the media. Then, suddenly, she fell silent. Social media began to fill with speculation about the whereabouts of the lawyer, internationally recognised human rights advocate and feminist reformer.

I have met Lina several times, in Berlin and in Uganda. Over time, I came to know the woman behind the public figure: deeply intelligent, guided by her faith and with a warmth that many experience as maternal. A friendship grew from those encounters. That is why her silence did not feel abstract to me. At the beginning of this year, I wrote about her for the Berliner Zeitung and The Critique Magazine after she had disappeared. On election night, masked members of Uganda’s military security forces had abducted her from her home. For three weeks, no one knew where she was being held, or whether she was still alive.

When things once again went quiet around her in July, I began following the few clues available. Then, unexpectedly, I managed to reach her through a secret phone. She invited me to visit her at a location that could not be disclosed. Before I set off, Lina had one surprisingly ordinary request: “Please bring me some wool to crochet with — black, red and yellow.”

And so I set out with a generous supply of wool in my luggage. From Kinshasa I travelled east, first by scheduled flight, then in a small aircraft and finally by road. As the journey continued, the cities and larger settlements disappeared. Reddish-brown earth clung to shoes and tyres, and rain had turned parts of the road into deep, sticky mud. At the end of the journey stood a small Catholic mission station somewhere in the vast borderlands of north-eastern Congo.

The borders here cut across connections that have existed for generations. Families, languages and trade link communities on either side. For Lina Zedriga, who comes from the wider border region, this is familiar terrain. Here she has found a measure of refuge, although the threat has not disappeared.

Now you can find me somewhere, but I am not nowhere.

When I meet her, she greets me with a sentence that sounds almost like a riddle: “Now you can find me somewhere, but I am not nowhere.” For now, this modest outpost is her refuge. Low buildings with corrugated iron roofs surround a small compound. Chickens wander through the yard. A generator rattles into life whenever the electricity fails. Somewhere nearby, a radio is playing.

Sunlight falls through an open window onto a wooden table covered with balls of wool, crochet hooks, scarves and bags in the colours of Uganda. A crucifix hangs on the wall. Mama Lina smiles. “At the moment, I am a nomad — for my own safety. I have stepped back for a while. I am doing this for my family, my friends and all those I love, and who love me.”

Only weeks earlier, the former magistrate, who also studied Women and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, had stood at the helm of the NUP after party leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine, left Uganda following weeks in hiding and grave threats to his life. Her own release from detention was still painfully recent. After almost three weeks held incommunicado, she had appeared before a court and been transferred to prison. She was finally released on bail at the end of February. Not long afterwards, she was entrusted with leading Uganda’s main opposition party.

There was hardly a moment to breathe. She appeared before supporters, attended formal engagements, travelled, spoke, organised and spent endless hours in meetings and on the telephone. Maintaining such a schedule so soon after detention took a heavy toll.

Across Uganda, people affectionately call her “Mama Lina”. The name reflects more than her age or experience. A lawyer, academic, peacebuilder, mother and devout Catholic, she has spent much of her life mediating conflicts, encouraging dialogue and advocating non-violence. Even when speaking about those who caused her suffering, she refuses to surrender to hatred. Forgiveness, she believes, does not mean denying injustice or abandoning the demand for accountability. It means refusing to allow injustice to rule one’s heart.

One time in the basement is enough.

Yet the wounds remain: tinnitus, sleepless nights, inner restlessness and the constant feeling of being followed. After receiving a serious warning of another possible abduction, she decided to leave Uganda. Wherever she may be staying, she has reason to remain cautious. Recently, she says, her Google account was compromised. Two unknown smartphones, traceable to Kenya, had suddenly gained access to the account. People close to her suspect that someone was trying to determine her whereabouts.

“One time in the basement is enough,” she says. In Uganda, “the basement” has become a grim shorthand for illegal, incommunicado detention and abuse by the security apparatus. After her abduction, reports indicated that Zedriga may have been held at an SFC facility near Entebbe, although her exact place of detention was never independently confirmed. “What happened there will remain with me for the rest of my life. I cannot put my family, my friends or myself through that again.”

Her withdrawal is not an act of surrender, but a decision to stay alive. “If you want to keep hope alive, you need to remain alive — not for selfish reasons, but in order to continue.” To continue serving, speaking and eventually returning to stand with those who have no protection and whose names may never appear in the news.

Crocheting is therapy for me.

At the mission station, Lina does not simply wait. In the morning, prayers or singing can be heard. People pass through the compound, children run outside and motorcycles occasionally arrive with visitors or small deliveries. When a tropical downpour strikes the corrugated iron roofs, every other sound disappears beneath the rain. Friends send her yarn whenever they can, and she crochets. Bags, scarves and small figures have begun to form a modest collection.

“Crocheting is therapy for me,” she explains. “When my hands are working, my thoughts become calmer. I am creative. I am alive. I can see something new taking shape from a single thread. That gives me a sense of security and a vision of the future.”

She also works in the garden, prays and tries to regain the balance that imprisonment and persecution took from her. Her faith sustains her. “God has not abandoned me. Mother Mary guides me, even when I cannot yet see where the road will lead.”

She is deeply grateful to those who have opened their doors to her. “I thank the brothers and sisters who have given me shelter, who pray for me and who protect me, even though doing so may place them at risk. Their love reminds me that I am not alone.”

Her situation reflects a darker reality in Uganda. Critical voices face imprisonment, harassment and pressure to leave. Exile separates people from their families, colleagues and the communities they hoped to serve. And the country loses knowledge, experience and ideas it can scarcely afford to drive away.

Zedriga believes such repression cannot be sustained indefinitely. “We have tried through the National Unity Platform. We have stood in two elections,” she says. “But those in power do not permit genuine political competition. They interfere, persecute critical voices and attempt to eliminate every form of opposition.”

The pressure reaches far beyond political leaders. Grassroots activists and ordinary supporters who organise meetings, mobilise their neighbours or simply speak openly can face arrest, violence and intimidation. These are the people she hopes one day to stand beside again.

The sky is the limit.

On 8 September, Dr Lina Zedriga celebrates her 65th birthday. Where, she will not tell us. Somewhere where the mountains still have snow on their peaks even in summer. “The sky is the limit,” she adds with a mischievous smile.

Her journey continues, and research will be part of what comes next: a return to questions that have occupied her throughout her life, now enriched by decades of experience far beyond university walls. Over the years she has built friendships and professional connections across borders. Beyond Uganda, her work has earned recognition and opened doors that persecution at home has tried to close.

She remembers another birthday with particular affection. In 2022, in Dresden, the capital of the German Free State of Saxony, she was welcomed and celebrated at the Kulturpalast. There was a birthday cake whose surface had been painted by an artist, turning the cake itself into a small work of art before it was finally cut. In recent years, Saxony and Uganda have developed a lively exchange, driven by considerable commitment on both sides.

The memory of Dresden brings into focus one of the contradictions of Lina Zedriga’s life: welcomed and honoured in one country, persecuted in another.

I ask whether she might now allow herself a break. At 65, many people are retiring; some have already been retired for years. Lina laughs at the suggestion. She has never understood her commitment as a job. It is a passion, she says. Seeing something wrong, recognising an injustice and wanting to change it does not end because a particular birthday has arrived.

For her 65th birthday, she wishes for something that sounds modest but is anything but simple: a little more normality in the world. More justice for people of every gender and every generation. Safety for those who want to bring positive change to their communities and countries. Civic commitment, she believes, should be an ordinary and valued part of public life.

Perhaps that is what normality would mean for Mama Lina: being able to pursue her passion without putting herself or those she loves in danger. To research, to teach, to speak freely. And to celebrate a birthday without having to keep its location secret.

Hope has never died in me.

Her thoughts inevitably return to Uganda. “I want to see Uganda become truly free and shine again as the Pearl of Africa,” she says. “If we do not achieve it for ourselves, then we must continue for our children and grandchildren. I believe it is possible. Hope has never died in me.”

On the table before her, another piece grows slowly, stitch by stitch. Black, yellow and red — the colours of Uganda. Outside, a motorcycle passes over the red earth, its engine fading into the distance. Lina Zedriga lowers her eyes to her hands and makes the next stitch.

It is a quiet reminder that resistance does not always have to be loud. Sometimes freedom begins with a single thread.