Tanzania: Crackdown On Popular Dissent in Tanzania As Sham Election Goes Ahead
Tanzania’s election is a coronation, not a poll, amid brutal crackdown with troops in the streets, detained citizens and opposition leader Tundu Lissu on death row.
As President Samia Suluhu Hassan orders hundreds of Tanzanian troops to the streets to secure what local observers say is a coronation, not an election, hundreds of citizens are being arbitrarily detained across the country.
More than 70 opposition leaders and pro-democracy activists have allegedly been forcibly disappeared. Popular politician Tundu Lissu, who has been charged with, but not yet found guilty of, treason, is reportedly being held in solitary confinement on death row, under 24-hour surveillance. His deputy, John Heche, was arrested and unlawfully detained in Dodoma last week.
“We are being deleted by the government under Samia’s regime,” Heche’s brother said.
Security forces in full military regalia patrolling the streets. Reports of torture, beatings, starvation and arbitrary detention of dozens of political opposition leaders and citizens alike. Truckloads of stuffed ballot boxes reportedly uncovered en route to voting sites and government employees threatened with firings if they don’t cast a ballot: Overwhelming evidence shows that Tanzania’s national election on 29 October is nothing more than Kabuki theatre, say local observers and opposition.
By Daily Maverick.
