Tanzania on the global justice radar

The prolonged detention, horrific torture and deportation of Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire has drawn international attention to the authoritarian practices of the Tanzanian administration, months before the general election in October. It has also provoked an important debate on the rationale for international trial observers and defense counsel. 

Boniface and Agather were arrested in Dar es Salaam prior and during the trial of opposition CHADEMA leader Tundu Lissu respectively. Six other East Africans including a former Justice Minister, former Chief Justice, lawyers and journalists and human rights defenders had already been denied entry. Lissu’s Monday 19 May hearing was nationally and internationally highly controversial even before the state deported the six.

On 9 April, Tanzanian police forcefully broke up his political rally calling for electoral reforms. Supporters were beaten and teargassed. Tundu was arrested and driven 1,000 kilometers by road to Dar es Salaam. Tundu has since been charged with publishing “false information”. Under Tanzania’s cybercrime laws, the offence is treasonous, non-bailable and could attract a death sentence. On his first hearing on 24 April, 23 supporters were brutalized outside the courts and had to seek medical treatment for cuts, bruises and sexual assault.

It is this pattern of state violence that led to eighteen trial observers flying in to attend Tundu’s first physical hearing. Their presence has provoked intense attention and debate across the Jumuiya family of eight countries. While most seem to understand the importance of independent trial observation, a minority led by President Suluhu herself, have argued the observers were merely “busy bodies” intruding in the sovereign affairs of a “peaceful” Tanzania. A few Kenya Senators bizarrely argued that the observers had displayed “bad manners”.

These arguments are blissfully and possibly, intentionally ignorant of the historically challenges Tanzania faces and the importance of international trial observation today. The use of repressive laws to restrict freedom of online and offline expression, peaceful assembly and association has sharpened in the last five years. Opposition party leaders have been routinely arbitrarily arrested and detained. Tundu Lissu himself was shot 17 times in that failed assassination attempt in 2017. Close to a hundred people have been abducted since 2015. Several like Mdude Nyagali, yet to be found.

Opposition rallies have been forcefully disrupted severally while ruling party candidates and their campaigns allowed to proceed without restriction. Human rights and governance organisations have been denied clearance to observe elections and threatened with deregistration. Fear and self-censorship, not peace, best describes Tanzania in the lead up to this year’s elections.

The Tanzanian government’s mistreatment of East African observers and the intimidation of Tanzania defence lawyers this week offends 810 years of modern criminal justice. Eight centuries ago, the Magna Carta declared the British King was not above the law and that every citizen had the right to a fair and public trial, defended by lawyers of their choice and preceded over by an independent judge.

These principles are not foreign to Kenya. Without UK barrister Denis Pritt (QC), Jomo Kenyatta’s trial would probably not have got international attention. Without American lawyer Kerry Kennedy, Amnesty International lawyers Martin Hill, Hilary Fisher and others, several second liberation shujaas, among them Koigi wa Wamwere, Charles Kuria Wamwere, James Maigwa, G.G. Njuguna or journalists Gitobu Imanyara, Bedan Mbugua, Pius and Loyce Nyamora, would have been sentenced in the shadows.

Trial observation safeguards fair and public hearings for all accused people. It helps assess the strengths and weaknesses in criminal justice systems across the world. It is an international foundation for a competent and credible independent legal system not just for competing politicians but for marital, civil and business-related disputes.

In brutalising Agather and Boniface and deporting six other East African trial observers this week, Suluhu’s government has torpedoed its attempt to portray its legal system as free and fair. It has also offered more evidence for critics who have long argued, alongside the opposition, that without deep electoral reform, the impending elections will not offer Madam Suluhu a credible mandate to govern.

This opinion was also published in the Saturday Standard, 24 May 2025.