Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – Tanzania’s main opposition party said 13 officials had been arrested on their way to a rally to support their leader Tundu Lissu on Thursday as he faced a charge of treason in court.
Lissu, who faces a potential death sentence if convicted, refused to take part in the hearing because he could only appear by video link.
Authorities in the east African country have increasingly cracked down on the opposition Chadema party ahead of presidential and parliamentary polls in October.
Lissu’s party was disqualified from the forthcoming elections after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct.
« Some of our party officials have been arrested, » Chadema spokesperson Brenda Rupia told AFP, including deputy chairperson John Heche and secretary general John Mnyika.
Nine of the 13 arrested were later abandoned in a wood, a party official said.
Chadema said one man was killed after being beaten by police as hundreds gathered outside the court in the business capital Dar es Salaam, where Lissu’s hearing was due to take place.
AFP was unable to verify the claim of a death. Police were yet to comment.
« Authorities are not doing justice to us. They forget that this is a country for us all, » said supporter, Baraka Kunenga, 60.
Lissu, 57, has been arrested multiple times over the years and narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 2017.
His Chadema party has accused President Samia Suluhu Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.
Chadema said Lissu refused to appear by video link to the court on Thursday « as conducting the hearing virtually goes against the principle of transparency and the defendant’s right to a fair hearing ».
He has not been seen since a brief court appearance on April 10, when he was charged with treason, which has no option of bail, and « publication of false information ».
– Optimism denied –
The president’s party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), won an overwhelming victory in local elections last year but Chadema says the vote was not free or fair since many of its candidates were disqualified.
Chadema has said it would boycott the upcoming elections in October without reforms, including a more independent Electoral Commission and clearer rules to ensure candidates are not removed from ballots.
It says its subsequent disqualification is unconstitutional.
A lawyer by training, Lissu entered parliament in 2010 and ran for president in 2020.
He was shot 16 times in a 2017 attack that he says was ordered by his political opponents.
After losing the 2020 election to Magufuli, he fled the country.
He returned in 2023 on a wave of optimism as Hassan moved to relax some of her predecessor’s restrictions on the opposition and the media.
Those hopes proved short-lived.
Rights groups and Western governments are increasingly critical of renewed repression, including the arrests of Chadema politicians as well as abductions and murders of opposition figures.
In Dar es Salaam on Thursday, police erected a barricade around the court in the face of criticism from many of the gathered supporters.
« I cannot believe this happening in our own country, » said supporter Aswile Mwaisanzu, 48.
© Agence France-Presse
