PREVIEW
Congress plans critical review of funding for Hassan’s government after killings and stolen election
The United States has made its first move against President Samia Suluhu Hassan following last year’s political violence by imposing a travel ban on Tanzania’s police chief. On 21 May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department designated Faustine Jackson Mafwele based on ‘credible information that he was involved in gross violations of human rights’.
The sanctions, which impose a ban on Mafwele travelling to the US, state that the Tanzanian Police Force ‘detained, tortured, and sexually assaulted Ugandan Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan Boniface Mwangi’ last May (AC Vol 66 No 11, President Hassan turns bulldozer).
Atuhaire and Mwangi joined activists from across East Africa trying to attend the trial of Tundu Lissu, leader of the opposition Chadema party, who had been detained on trumped up treason charges for over a year. Others, including Kenya’s former cabinet minister Martha Karua, were deported on arrival in Tanzania as part of a crackdown against pro-democracy activists ahead of last October’s elections.
Lissu was arrested shortly after state authorities banned him from contesting the presidential polls, which saw Hassan awarded 98% of the vote on a turnout of over 80%.
Sanctions against Mafwele are largely symbolic and come a month after President Hassan’s inquiry into the post-election violence exonerated state security forces. Instead, it blamed unnamed opposition activists for the death of at least 518 people (Dispatches 27/4/26, Election killings – blood on whose hands? & Vol 67 No 10, Dodoma pulls up the drawbridge).
But it could be just the start. On 21 May, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and his Democrat counterpart Jeanne Shaheen tabled a bill cutting US economic support for Dodoma and demanding ‘a comprehensive review of U.S.-Tanzania bilateral ties and a report on whether senior officials involved in human rights abuses should face sanctions’.
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