Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for accountability one year after killings by security forces and armed men in Zanzibar during the 2020 elections.
HRW said its research found that at least 14 people died and 55 were injured, as police, soldiers, and armed men in civilian cloths teargassed and shot at crowds between 26 and 30 October, 2020.
It also said armed men arbitrarily arrested, detained, and tortured opposition supporters on Zanzibar’s main islands of Unguja and Pemba.
The rights organisation revealed that it interviewed 57 people – including victims and witnesses, journalists, and opposition party officials – by phone between October 2020 and November 2021.
‘Tanzania’s authorities have not taken steps to ensure justice for family members of those who died, and survivors of the serious abuses that marred Zanzibar’s 2020 elections’, HRW Tanzania researcher, Oryem Nyeko, said.
‘The leaders of both Zanzibar and Tanzania should demonstrate their commitment to justice by ensuring accountability and compensation for survivors and the families of those who died at the hands of government security forces.
‘It is important to bring the cycles of election-related violence in Zanzibar to an end. For this to happen, the Tanzanian and Zanzibari authorities should take urgent steps to rein in security forces and ensure justice’.
HRW said on the evenings of 26, 27 and 28 October, 2020, security forces shot into crowds near polling places on Pemba Island, killing at least nine people, including a 16-year-old student and a pregnant woman.
HRW reported that security forces, according to interviewees, patrolled the streets, harassed residents and beat them, brandishing guns and chasing them away from public spaces.
Security forces were also accused to have imposed and enforced curfews, beating those who did not comply, and arbitrarily arrested residents, detaining some in unofficial sites for weeks.
HRW also noted that almost all the witnesses interviewed said they did not report the killings because of the climate of fear brought on by the violence.
HRW also alleged that Zanzibar authorities attempted to control media coverage of abuses by blocking accredited journalists from filming security officials and entering some polling places during the election.
‘Police detained three journalists covering an opposition protest for an hour on [29 October] in Zanzibar City, Unguja’, HRW said in a statement.
However, on 11 November, 2020, the Tanzanian Inspector General of police, Simon Sirro, told the media that only two people had died during ‘sporadic violence’ on 26 October and that opposition supporters killed a policeman on 28 October.
At the time of this report, the authorities in Tanzania had not responded to the allegations.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Photo source: Anthony Siame/EPA
