Uganda's education system operated under a fundamental and largely unacknowledged contradiction: it used the English language as the primary medium of instruction and assessment from Primary 4 onwards, while serving a student population whose first, second, and often third languages were not English, and for whom English remains a foreign language throughout their educational careers. The consequence was a system in which students' intellectual capacity, knowledge, and understanding are consistently underrepresented and undervalued by assessments conducted in a language they have not mastered. This study examined this structural paradox and its consequences for learners, teachers, and the broader educational ecosystem through the lived experiences of students, teachers, parents, and educational administrators in Uganda's secondary school system. Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions conducted across urban and rural schools in Kampala, Mbarara, and Gulu districts, the study employed critical discourse analysis and interpretive phenomenological analysis to illuminate the emotional, cognitive, and social consequences of the English-medium assessment regime for Uganda's learners. Findings revealed that students experience profound shame, cognitive double-loading, selfdoubt, and academic alienation as consequences of being assessed in a language they are simultaneously trying to learn. Teachers described anguish at watching intellectually capable students produce inadequate examination performances because of linguistic rather than conceptual deficits. Parents articulated confusion and frustration at a system whose logic they cannot decipher and whose failures they cannot prevent. The study argued that Uganda's English-medium assessment regime constitutes a structural violence against learners and proposes evidence-based policy reforms oriented toward assessment justice.