In Tanzania, a member of the opposition party Chadema was found dead after being “kidnapped” by armed men, announced the party’s president, Freeman Mbowe, during a press conference on Sunday, September 8.
A member of the party’s national secretariat, Ali Mohamed Kibao, was forced off a bus at gunpoint on Friday while travelling from Dar es Salaam to Tanga on the country’s northern coast, party officials said. His body was found on Saturday in a district of Dar es Salaam.
The developments involving Kibao come less than a month after Mbowe, his deputy Tundu Lissu and other Chadema officials were briefly arrested in a mass raid ahead of a youth rally for the party.
Other party leaders have also disappeared.
“The autopsy was performed [en présence] Chadema’s lawyers and it is clear that Mr Kibao was severely beaten and had acid sprayed on his face.Mbowe said during his press conference on Sunday. “We cannot allow our people to continue disappearing or being killed like this”he said, before adding that “The lives of those responsible for Chadema are currently in danger”Mbowe said, without giving details, that other party leaders had also disappeared.
Kibao was a retired military intelligence officer who had worked with other opposition parties as well as the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party before joining Chadema, he added, without giving specific dates. Police have yet to release a statement on Kibao’s death, but police spokesman David Misime said on Saturday that an investigation had been launched into the opposition figure’s alleged abduction.
Human rights defenders and opponents had expressed concern about this repression, which they say could lead to a return to the oppressive policies of former President John Magufuli, who died in 2021. In August, the NGO Amnesty International had described the arrests of opponents as “a deeply worrying sign” ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in Tanzania in 2025, the first since Mr Magufuli’s death. The recent arrests were carried out despite commitments by the current president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, to lift restrictions on the opposition and the media.
