Tanzania polls: AU Commission accused of applauding carnage

The streets of Tanzania’s major towns, including the capital Dar es Salaam, have for the last few days been stained with blood and littered with bodies in what is the country’s deadliest election since independence.

Investigation by The Standard has unearthed graphic footage and images verified by international human rights organizations, capturing the horror of the crackdown. They show victims with various degrees of injuries inflicted by security forces who fired live rounds into unarmed demonstrators, aiming for the head and chest, clearly not to disperse or immobilise but to kill.

Videos civilians wailing as they try to resuscitate those shot, while draping the bodies of the dead with the national flag, show the horror that visited a country once touted as the bastion of stability in the region.

Media reports also point to the involvement of foreign operatives in the killings, though The Standard is yet to verify the claims.

And as Tanzania burned, President Samia Suluhu pulled the curtain shut, effectively cutting off the rest of the world from the horror as her countrymen were slaughtered in broad daylight.

The internet was throttled for days as foreign journalists were given marching orders and domestic reporters warned against “inciting panic.”

For five days since the country went to the polls, the internet is yet to be fully restored, with Tanzania’s Foreign Minister Mahmoud Thabit Kombo defending the shutdown as a plan to stop vandalism.

“Shutting down the internet and locking down the country so you can kill the people who supposedly voted for you is diabolical,” observes Tito Magoti, an international human rights lawyer based in Dar es Salaam.

Independent reports obtained by The Standard show that hospitals were ordered not to release casualty numbers and that anyone who dared go against this was met with serious repercussions.

Human rights activist Liberatus Mwang’ombe said there was a scheme to steal evidence.

“The police are going around shops that have CCTV cameras forcing people to delete footage showing brutality,” he stated.

International human rights observers now warn that the scale of violence unfolding in Tanzania has crossed the threshold of domestic law and entered the realm of international criminal justice.

The brutality, they say, bears all the hallmarks of crimes against humanity, systematic, deliberate, and state-sponsored, that would warrant the intervention of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Magoti has hinted at fresh rounds of crackdowns targeting government critics.“They have started to hunt down people in their houses. They use local chiefs and elders to identify opposition supporters and target them for execution,” Magoti told The Standard.

“What’s happening in Tanzania is typical of crimes against humanity,” added Magoti.

Under international law, some experts say the plot to shut down the internet could point to state intent to cover up coordinated crimes.

“By all standards, the carnage and outright human rights violations we have witnessed point to clear evidence of crimes against humanity. We demand that the ICC moves in and prosecutes the leadership of Tanzania for the atrocities committed,” said Vocal Africa’s Hussein Khalid.

Some rights groups and opposition figures have estimated that as many as 1,000 people may have been killed, some shot in the back as they fled.

Further investigations by The Standard indicate that some Kenyans may have been killed in the post-election mayhem, and several families in Kenya are appealing to the government to help bring their loved ones home for burial.

John Okoth Ogutu, a Kenyan teacher attached to Sky Schools in Dar es Salaam, is among those whose families are pleading with the government to help bring their loved ones home for burial. Ogutu was reportedly killed on Election Day at Goba Center in Ubungo, and his body is at the Mwananyamala mortuary.

“We are asking the State to intervene because we’ve learned that they plan to bury him in a mass grave,” a relative told The Standard.

At least 25 Tanzanians are said to be receiving treatment at various hospitals in Migori, on the Kenya–Tanzania border. Isebania authorities said six of them sustained gunshot injuries.

President Samia Suluhu, who was declared the winner of the elections, downplays the scale of the deaths.

“It’s time to unite our country and not destroy what we’ve built over more than six decades,” said Suluhu after she was declared the winner of the election. “The actions of the protestors were neither responsible nor patriotic.” 
 The African Union Commission (AUC), supposedly the custodian of Africa’s democratic charter, became one of the first to applaud Suluhu’s “victory”.

Its chairperson, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf dispatched a congratulatory message, praising a contest that had no contestants and an election largely marred by bullets and blood.

“AUC has become an obsolete organization whose time is up. It’s an outright abuse of the AUC mandate,” stated Khalid.

“It’s not surprising that the AUC is playing a familiar script. They want to appear as though they are meddling in a country’s internal affairs,” said Dr Kenneth Ombongi, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

Mombasa Woman Rep Zamzam Mohammed has received online backlash for congratulating Suluhu on her “re-election.”

In last Wednesday’s election, President Suluhu ran virtually unopposed after the main opposition party, Chadema, and its leader Tundu Lissu were barred from contesting and detained.

Several months before the polls, human rights defenders had sounded the alarm that all was not well. They were concerned that the space for dissent had vanished and activists were being arrested arbitrarily.

When she took power following the death of President John Magufuli, most Tanzanians hoped Suluhu would usher in democratic reforms after what was seen as Magufuli’s iron-fisted rule.

Instead, Suluhu, critics say, has taken the authoritarianism to a new level.

“The excessive use of force to shoot, kill, and maim cannot be tolerated in modern-day Africa,” said Khalid.

President William Ruto, in what is seen as a cautious decision, has so far avoided joining the Suluhu congratulatory choir.

“It’s obvious that President Ruto had to exercise some level of caution. He knows this can easily backfire and provoke Kenyans,” explains Dr Ombongi.