The Police in Tanzania has arrested Zitto Kabwe, a lawmaker and leader of a prominent opposition party during a meeting with his supporters.
Prior to this arrest, a magistrate court in Tanzania found Mr Kabwe guilty of sedition, a crime he was accused of in 2018 where he asserted that 100 people had been killed in clashes between cattle keepers and the police in the Uvinza district. He was banned from making public statements for one year thereafter.
This event is not an isolated one as authorities have continued to arrest and prosecute government critics,and shut-down media houses. The same day Mr Kabwe was arrested, the government revoked the license of one of the largest print and online publications of in the country, Daima Daily, without announcing a reason. The newspaper is owned by the leader of the official opposition in parliament, Freeman Mbowe.
Also, while members of the ruling party have been holding rallies and campaigns, opposition parties continually get haunted for doing the same and are placed under sharp scrutiny.
A Timeline of Violations in Tanzania
In 2018, the Tanzanian parliament passed the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content Regulations) legislation which gives the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) discretionary powers to license and regulate blogs, websites and other online content.
In the same year, President Magufuli denounced family planning, asking women to stop using contraception. The government suspended radio and television shows or advertisements encouraging family planning.
In February 2019, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority suspended The Citizen newspaper for one week, claiming it had violated the Bank of Tanzania’s reporting standards by reporting on inflation.
In April 2019, authorities detained and eventually deported Wairagala Wakabi, the director of the Uganda-based Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) on his way to a human rights event.
In May 2019, security forces were implicated in the abduction and death of Government critic, Mdude Nyagali who was abducted by armed men as he left work, hours after he called the President a “hypocrite” on Twitter. Five days later his body was found dumped in a bush.
In July 2019, Erick Kabendera, an investigative journalist who has previously written for international media outlets about governance issues in Tanzania, was abducted by unidentified men who drove him to an undisclosed location and held him for more than 24 hours. The police later admitted to detaining him. Since his arrest, the court has postponed his trial more than 12 times and refused bail each time. He is currently facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and involvement in organised crime.
In September 2019, the High Court in Dar Es Salaam suspended Fatma Karume, a human rights lawyer, from practising law after she challenged the Attorney General’s appointment.
2020, Same Old Same Old
Opposition voices and government critics have accused the Magufuli government of a lack of transparency in handling the COVID-19 outbreak in Tanzania.
“Everything that is related to corona is now in the [central] government’s hands,” a health adviser told New Humanitarian.
“There’s tremendous political pressure coming from the president’s office to control all of this.”
Despite warnings from the WHO about his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, President Magufuli, continues to treat it as a security issue rather than a health crisis.
Regarding human rights violations and clamp down on media, Magufuli’s government in Tanzania has refused to implement several East African Court of Justice rulings, including a judgement in March which directed them to amend Media Services Act provisions and bring them in line with the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community.
