President John Magufuli has presided over a crackdown on media
and civil society in Tanzania that has seriously...
undermined democratic freedoms as the country approaches elections, global rights groups said Monday.
undermined democratic freedoms as the country approaches elections, global rights groups said Monday.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
(HRW) said Tanzania was backsliding under Magufuli, whose administration
has been accused of jailing journalists, kidnapping activists and
assaulting political opponents.
Magufuli's rule, which
enters its fifth year next month, has been marked by an attack on free
speech previously unseen in Tanzania, critics say, unravelling progress
made by a country once rosily viewed in the region.
"Tanzania's really going down, very fast," Roland Ebole, a researcher with Amnesty International, told AFP in Nairobi.
"We have not seen this level of harassment, intimidation, or shutdown of media houses. It's a new for Tanzania."
Magufuli
came to power as a corruption-fighting "man of the people" but has
since been criticised for his authoritarian leadership style.
In two separate reports released Monday, HRW and Amnesty
detailed how Magufuli's administration had enforced his diktats using
draconian laws.
Newspapers have been shut down, live broadcasts of parliament switched off and critics jailed using cybercrime laws.
In
a recent case, journalist Erick Kabendera was held for questioning over
his citizenship, then threatened with sedition, before being charged
with organised crime and financial offences.
He has been in and out of court since his arrest in July and is suffering poor health.
In another high-profile case, Azory Gwanda, a Tanzanian journalist and government critic who disappeared in 2017, has never been found.
He has been in and out of court since his arrest in July and is suffering poor health.
In another high-profile case, Azory Gwanda, a Tanzanian journalist and government critic who disappeared in 2017, has never been found.
In May, high-profile dissident Mdude Nyagali was snatched by four gunmen and dumped, seriously beaten, in a village two days later.
HRW
and Amnesty—which unveiled their reports in Nairobi because permission
was not possible in Tanzania—said civil society workers, opposition
activists and others were too scared to speak openly to their
researchers.
"This is very significant, considering
you're talking about a country that really was free. A country where
people would say everything, and anything, they wanted to say," Ebole
said.
It comes as Tanzania faces local elections later
this year and national polls in 2020. Magufuli, nicknamed "The
Bulldozer", is expected to run again.
The effective
silencing of media and critics "does not create a good environment for
free and fair elections", HRW researcher Oryem Nyeko told reporters.
The
international community has taken notice. The US and UK have both
voiced concern over the "steady erosion of due process" in Tanzania,
pointing to Kabendera's treatment as a case in point.
Reporters
Without Borders, a watchdog, this year labelled Magufuli a "press
freedom predator" and dropped Tanzania 25 places on its annual press
freedom index.
No comments :
Post a Comment