Ugandan singer and politician Bobi Wine escaped a police arrest on Saturday night in Kampala.

Bobi Wine was to offer a show 80 kilometres from the Ugandan capital when a police unit stormed the hotel where he was staying.

Several members of his group were arrested.

Bobi Wine was “forced to flee and hide”, while several of his relatives were arrested and beaten, according to his lawyer.

In a message to his Twitter account on Saturday night, the singer explained that the police had cordoned off the neighbourhood where the hotel is in which he and his band were resting before the start of a concert.

“The police are looking for me everywhere, they have even blocked most roads in my search (…) This injustice must stop and we must stop it by ourselves,” he wrote on Twitter.

The star’s lawyer calls the arrest an “act of shameful political repression” aimed at “violating the rights of Bobi Wine”.

Since he became an opponent of President Yoweri Museveni in 2017, authorities have repeatedly barred 36-year-old Bobi Wine from performing in public.