‘We won’t allow them to get away with this’: activists to sue Tanzania’s authorities over ‘sexual torture’

Two east African activists say they plan to sue Tanzania’s authorities for unlawful detention and torture throughout a go to in help of an opposition politician in Might.

Boniface Mwangi, from Kenya, and Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan, despatched shock waves across the area earlier this month once they gave an emotional press convention during which they alleged that they had been sexually assaulted and, in Atuhaire’s case, smeared in excrement after their detention in Dar es Salaam. “[The authorities] take you through sexual torture,” Mwangi mentioned on the time.

Even in a area accustomed to recurrent rights abuses, the obvious concentrating on of foreigners by the Tanzanian authorities marked a brand new and worrying flip in a crackdown on critics and opponents of the president, Samia Suluhu Hassan.

In interviews with the Guardian, Mwangi and Atuhaire mentioned they deliberate to provoke circumstances in a Tanzanian court docket in addition to by regional and worldwide avenues, together with the east African court docket of justice and the African court docket on human and peoples’ rights.

“We’re not going to let them get away with this,” mentioned Mwangi, a well known Kenyan photojournalist and activist. Atuhaire, a lawyer, journalist and critic of the federal government of the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, mentioned: “We need to hold these guys accountable to know that they cannot violate people unprovoked like that.”

Mwangi and Atuhaire, who had travelled to Tanzania to attend a court docket listening to for a treason case towards the opposition politician Tundu Lissu on 19 Might, say they have been taken from their lodge by folks they described as safety officers, illegally detained and verbally and bodily abused.

Mwangi mentioned his beating began at an immigration workplace that afternoon when a safety official slapped and punched him repeatedly within the presence of Atuhaire and three legal professionals. He mentioned he was assaulted once more at a police station, the place safety personnel accused the activists of getting travelled to Tanzania to disrupt peace and smash the nation.

“The real torture,” Mwangi mentioned, occurred that night when a gaggle of about seven males – whom he described as having bloodshot eyes and smelling of alcohol – and a lady handcuffed and blindfolded him and Atuhaire and drove them to a compound.

Each activists mentioned that on the compound they have been ordered to strip and have been suspended the wrong way up then hit with wood planks on their soles. They mentioned their attackers stifled their screams by stuffing Mwangi’s underwear into his mouth and placing some fabric in Atuhaire’s mouth.

The activists mentioned their attackers inserted what appeared to be their fingers or different objects into their rectums and smeared excrement on Atuhaire’s physique, then photographed them and informed them to not reveal what had occurred. Two days later they have been dumped at their nations’ borders.

“I didn’t see us coming out of there alive,” mentioned Atuhaire. “It was really, really painful.”

Mwangi mentioned: “Nothing in my mind or in my life prepared me for this. I’ve been injured before, I’ve been beaten before, I’ve been shot before. My house has been bombed. I’ve seen all kind of extremities and cruelties, but I’ve never felt such kind of pain.”

The Guardian has approached a Tanzanian police spokesperson for remark. Final week Tanzania’s consultant to the UN, Abdallah Possi, informed a gathering of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva: “Although these claims against the government are highly doubtful, we take the allegations of torture, sexual abuse and malpractices very seriously. That is why the government is currently investigating and, if established, those concerned will be held accountable.”

A collection of killings, kidnappings, arrests and tortures over the previous 12 months have prompted widespread condemnation regionally and internationally. Amongst these killed was Mohamed Ali Kibao, a member of the secretariat of the primary opposition celebration Chadema, who was discovered crushed and together with his face doused with acid in September.

In April, Father Charles Kitima, a Catholic priest who’s vocal on democratic reforms and rights points, was brutally attacked close to his residence. Earlier this month, the federal government deregistered a church belonging to Josephat Gwajima, a politician from the ruling celebration, after he referred to as out unlawful detentions and enforced disappearances and introduced a prayer marketing campaign to hunt divine intervention for Hassan and different nationwide leaders. And final week two males who posted talkshows about democracy and governance on YouTube have been arrested for “improper use of social media”.

There isn’t any proof of Hassan’s private involvement within the incidents, lots of which the federal government has condemned. Nonetheless, opposition politicians and rights campaigners say her administration is overseeing a return to the fear-based ways of her predecessor, John Magufuli. Earlier this month she warned activists from neighbouring nations towards “trying to destabilise” Tanzania.

Maria Sarungi Tsehai, a Tanzanian rights activist, described the concentrating on of non-Tanzanians as unprecedented and a “sign of huge panic” on the a part of the Hassan administration within the run-up to her first presidential electoral check.

“What we’re seeing is a very insecure presidential candidate,” mentioned Tsehai, who lives in self-exile in Nairobi. “She has to lean more heavily on that security apparatus. And she has decided that she doesn’t want to have any free or fair election. She just wants to get her second term. And that decision comes at a very heavy price.”

Final 12 months, Tsehai was kidnapped from the streets of the Kenyan capital by armed males and feared she would change into the newest sufferer of a spate of enforced deportations from Kenya. Nevertheless, she was launched a short while later with out crossing the border after information of her kidnapping unfold rapidly on social media.

Within the months after Hassan took workplace following Magufuli’s dying in 2021, the president gained home and worldwide approval for reconciling with the opposition and reversing a few of Magufuli’s repressive insurance policies. However since then a wave of repression has worn out hopes of lasting reform.

Hassan’s CCM celebration has dominated the nation since independence. The opposition and civil society have lengthy referred to as for reform of the structure, which critics say grants the president and the ruling celebration extreme powers.

Earlier this 12 months, Lissu was arrested and charged with treason and cybercrime offences, and his Chadema celebration – which had referred to as for a boycott of this 12 months’s elections except electoral reforms have been enacted – was disqualified from taking part.

Mwangi mentioned CCM was performing for self-preservation. “What Suluhu is trying to do is win an election by any means necessary,” he mentioned. “She’s reading from a dictator’s manual [that says] ‘brutalise and beat people into submission’.”

Atuhaire – whose work in exposing corruption received her a world girls of braveness award from the US final 12 months – mentioned her and Mwangi’s expertise confirmed the “level of impunity” in Tanzania.

The activists are nonetheless nursing accidents on their ft and different components of their our bodies, along with having psychological trauma. They mentioned that they had determined to talk about their alleged abuse to shine a light-weight on the plight of Tanzanians who had gone by related experiences.

“There’s no level of shame or stigma that is more important than pursuing justice,” Atuhaire mentioned. “Justice is the driving factor – these people must be held accountable for what they did to us, for what they have done to Tanzanians.”