Repression taking root in poll-bound Tanzania – Amnesty Int’l

The general election is expected to be dominated by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party, with the two main opposition presidential candidates locked out from contesting.

Last month Luhaga Mpina was disqualified for a second time from running, while Tundu Lissu of the Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema), the biggest opposition party, is on trial for treason, the Amnesty International report said.

“President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government has dashed hopes for reform. Instead, under her watch, authorities have continued and intensified repressive practices targeting opposition leaders, civil society, journalists, and dissenting voices, including through assaults, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, with nobody held accountable,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa.

“Political opponents have faced politically motivated charges and in some cases their right to contest the vote has been denied.”

Amnesty International is calling on the authorities to end ”their unacceptable campaign of repression against dissent, which has escalated since the last elections five years ago”.

It urged them to ”immediately and unconditionally drop trumped up and politically motivated charges against all those detained solely for expressing political and religious views or other beliefs, including opposition leader Tundu Lissu”.

Entitled “Unopposed, unchecked, unjust:  The disquiet beneath the 2025 Tanzania vote” Amnesty International featured the intervies of 43 victims, witnesses, family members of victims, legal representatives, and members of civil society organisations, and collated reports of attacks from media sources.

It said all documented cases were verified through multiple independent sources where possible.

The Tanzanian authorities did not respond to Amnesty’s request for comment.

Abductions and unlawful killings

Amnesty Internationalsaid it also documented widespread and systematic human rights violations—including enforced disappearances and torture and other ill-treatment, and extrajudicial killings of opposition figures and activists.

The Tanganyika Law Society documented 83 cases of people going missing under mysterious circumstances as of August 9, 2024.

On 7 September 2024, the body of Ali Mohammed Kibao, a senior strategist for Chadema, was found dumped near the shores of the Indian Ocean a day after being abducted from a bus in Dar es Salaam.

On 26 July 2024, Dioniz Kipanya, a Chadema party official, disappeared when he left home following a telephone conversation with an unidentified person. He is yet to be found. More than a year since Chadema youth activists Deusdedith Soka and Jacob Mlay, and Frank Mbise, a motorcycle taxi driver, were abducted by a group of men suspected to be police officers, their whereabouts remain unknown.

Amnesty International is calling for prompt and rigorous investigations into all reported abductions, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and attacks, and for those responsible to be brought to justice.
WN/as/APA