The abduction and killing of an opposition official over the weekend in Tanzania has kindled fear and consternation in the East African country, with activists saying it has added to questions about the democratic credentials of the nation’s pathbreaking president as elections loom.
The official, Ali Mohamed Kibao, was a member of the secretariat of the opposition Chadema party. He went missing on Friday after armed men handcuffed him and forcibly removed him from a bus leaving the city of Dar es Salaam, according to his party. Mr. Kibao’s body was found a day later in the suburbs of the city, and party officials said an autopsy showed that he had been beaten badly and that acid had been poured on his face.
“He was absolutely destroyed. He couldn’t be recognized,” Tundu Lissu, the party’s deputy and a former presidential candidate, said in an interview hours after Mr. Kibao was buried on Monday. “It was a horrible death.”
President Samia Suluhu Hassan condemned the “terrible” killing of Mr. Kibao, who defected from the governing party over a decade ago to join Chadema.
Mr. Kibao’s death comes amid a wave of abductions and arrests of opposition party members that have rattled Tanzania as it gears up for local elections in December and a general election next year. The apparent crackdown has spurred fears that a government that came to power pledging reform was returning to the repressive tactics of its predecessors.
Ms. Hassan, Tanzania’s first female leader, had promised to break with the previous leader’s autocratic tendencies when she took office in 2021. Ms. Hassan met with Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington in 2022 and again during Ms. Harris’s visit to Tanzania last year as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to bolster democracy and women’s empowerment in Africa.
Ms. Hassan signaled early in her term that she would ease repression in Tanzania: She allowed political rallies to resume, lifted a ban on several newspapers and opened the country to foreign investors. But more recently, she has been accused of stalling in enacting broader overhauls, including writing a new Constitution, amending the electoral law and overhauling onerous media regulations.
“There was this real and urgent need to want to believe that Samia was going to be different,” Mr. Lissu said. But the only difference she has with her populist predecessor, John Magufuli, he said, is that “Magufuli did it with a snarl and Samia does it with a smile.”
Mr. Kibao was killed just weeks after more than 500 Chadema opposition leaders and members were arrested ahead of a rally, drawing criticism from rights groups and spurring concerns that the authorities were cracking down on opposition parties as they did ahead of the 2020 elections.
And in recent months, human rights activists and local news outlets have reported that political activists and opposition leaders who had directly criticized Ms. Hassan or planned to organize protests against her government have been abducted or arbitrarily arrested. While some of those snatched were tortured and later dropped at police stations, others remain missing, said Maria Sarungi Tsehai, a Tanzanian activist.
Ms. Tsehai said the crackdown was meant to deny the opposition a level playing field in the elections and to entrench the hold of the ruling party that has dominated Tanzanian politics for more than half a century. Ms. Hassan came to power in 2021 after Mr. Magufuli, with whom she served as vice president, died months after winning his second term.
“The ultimate fear they have is the loss of power,” Ms. Tsehai said.
“I hope the abduction and murder of Ali Kibao is going to open up the door for a much wider conversation about what’s happening in Tanzania,” she added. “There’s extreme outrage and anger in the population who feel nobody should die like that.”
For now, activists and opposition leaders have called for swift accountability around Mr. Kibao’s killing and for leaders of the security establishment, including the home affairs minister, to resign.
Tanzania’s police have said that they are investigating the killing and that they have enlisted help from experts from the office of the director of criminal investigations.
Officials with the Chadema party have accused the police and security services of being suspects in the case and urged the government to establish an independent body to investigate.
The United States Embassy in Tanzania on Monday also called for “an independent, transparent and prompt investigation” into Mr. Kibao’s killing.
Ms. Hassan said that she had ordered investigative agencies to bring her detailed information about the killing as soon as possible.
“Our country is a democracy, and every citizen has the right to live,” Ms. Hassan said in a post on X. “The government I lead does not tolerate such brutal acts.”
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