Political repression extends in Tanzania a few months after the general elections
The vignette of number 202 of The Continent magazine portrays a woman recording four men, victorious, while trampling two people who try to protect themselves, with their hands on their heads, after being tortured. The woman is Samia Suluhu Hassan, president of Tanzania. One of the four men is probably Faustine Jackson Mafwele, police assistant commissioner. The two people on the floor are the Kenyan Boniface Mwangi and the Ugandesa Agather Atuhaire. The scene is a recreation of the torture of which both activists were victims while forcing them to say “thanks, Mama Samia” and who have denounced in a press conference in Nairobi. The newspaper El País collected several extracts from the hard testimonies of Mwangi and Atuhaire, who had gone to Tanzania to provide prison help to Tundu Lissu, leader of the Democracy and Development Party (Chadema), the main opposition of the formation that has been governing in Tanzania since its creation in 1977, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi or party of the revolution Julius Nyerere after merging the African National Union of Tanganica (Tanu) with the Afro Shirazi party (ASP).
Lissu is one of many opponents who are being imprisoned by the Government of Tanzania a few months of the general elections. As the country denounces, “the wave of arbitrary arrests, kidnappings and murders by Hassan’s government in recent years has aroused the concern of the international community, by evidenced by the country’s antidemocratic drift.” Victims of this government violence are the opponents Deusdedith Soka, Jacob Godwin Mlay and Frank Mbise, activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai or the general secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Tanzopal, Fr. Charles Kitima, among others. And all this under the complicit silence of neighboring countries and the rest of the international community.
The current president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, agreed to the position after the death by Covid-19 of her predecessor, John Magufuli, who had been re-elected in 2020. The arrival of Hassan to power came accompanied by a certain optimism, because the figure of Magufuli was very answered by her authoritarian drift. However, less than five years later, a few months after the start of the electoral campaign, the Tanzano Government has disqualified the opposition parties of the electoral career, such as the chadema, and has even cut X, increasing the forms of repression. The blocking of the social network announced by Jerry Silaa, Minister of Information, is protected by the permissiveness of the platform with the dissemination of pornographic content, although, as collected Online platforms that operate in our country comply with our laws ». Laws that, however, do not protect fundamental rights and freedoms.
Photography: Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire during the press conference they offered in Nairobi to explain the details of their detention in Tanzania.
