After a vain search of local hospitals and mortuaries, the family of journalist Maneno Selanyika concluded their mourning rites on November 8 with prayer, but without a body.
He was one of three journalists among hundreds or more Tanzanians killed during protests over a disputed election. Selanyika was killed on the evening of October 29, Tanzania’s election day, near his home in the city of Dar es Salaam, according to the Dar City Press Club and Twaweza, a local civil society organization.
Two other journalists were killed: Master Tindwa Mtopa, a sports journalist with the privately owned Clouds Media, was at home in Dar es Salaam when he was shot, according to two journalists familiar with his case and the independent news outlet The Chanzo.
Kelvin Lameck, who worked with Christian station Baraka FM, died in the southern city of Mbeya. A civil society statement said he was killed while “on duty.” Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has yet to independently and fully confirm the circumstances surrounding the three journalists’ deaths and if they were linked to their work.
CPJ has not documented the fatal shooting of a Tanzanian journalist since 2012. The lack of clarity surrounding these killings echoes a broader murkiness about the days surrounding the elections as authorities suppressed protests, which escalated with President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s declared win with 98% of the vote.
Further protests were planned for independence day on December 9. Different counts estimate that several hundred to 3,000 people died as the state responded to crowds of young demonstrators with deadly force amid a five-day internet blackout.
Footage verified by the BBC and CNN showed bodies lying on the streets and piled up outside a hospital. The signs were there that things would be difficult during the elections, but none of us expected it to be this bad,” one veteran editor told CPJ.
Ahead of the vote, human rights groups warned of “deepening repression” and “terror” in Tanzania, with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and United Nations experts highlighting abductions, killings, and torture of opposition officials and critics.
The main opposition party Chadema was banned from the election and its leader charged with treason. There are signs that Tanzania tried to limit foreign press access during the polls, with at least three international outlets reporting to CPJ that their media accreditation applications were rejected.
The Nairobi-based International Press Association Eastern Africa (IPAEA), which represents about 300 journalistsregionally, told CPJ it was not aware of any successful applications to cover the elections on mainland Tanzania.
CPJ spoke to at least 20 Tanzanian journalists, as well as several activists, who described a suffocating climate of fear of retaliation for speech perceived to question official narratives. The government refuses to provide an official death toll or respond to allegations of mass graves, while Samia has blamed foreigners for the protests.
“We cannot publish. I have a lot I want to write but I can’t,” one media owner told CPJ, explaining why his outlet had not reported on the journalists killed. Like most of those interviewed, he spoke on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.
“They will come to you and give you a treason charge if you publish,” he said. Human rights lawyer Tito Magoti told CPJ that the media had largely failed to cover the elections comprehensively due to a combination of state control and the sector’s failure to exercise “boldness.”
“The media was absent in Tanzania during elections, if you call what happened on the 29th elections,” Magoti said.
“Even now, as we speak, the media is missing, such that there is no reporting of what happened during elections, the atrocities that were committed, but also there are no critical voices from the communities coming out through the media.”
Constitutional and legal affairs minister, Juma Homera, said that 2,045 people were arrested over the election chaos. Among the detainees were prominent social media users and journalists, on charges that included treason, which carries a death penalty, incitement, and armed robbery.
At least one journalist, Godfrey Thomas Ng’omba, bureau chief with the online news outlet Ayo TV, was charged with treason. Ng’omba was arrested on election day, detained for six days, then rearrested.
He was charged with treason and conspiracy to obstruct the elections on November 7, alongside 55 other co-defendants, according to court documents, reviewed by CPJ, which did not specify which actions amounted to the offenses.
Ng’omba was released on November 25, as authorities withdrew hundreds of charges, including for treason, following a presidential directive.
Muthoki Mumo is a CPJ Africa Program Coordinator. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has a master’s in journalism and globalization from the University of Hamburg.
In other words, even before her official FIRST TERM of office; Samia Suluhu Hassan didn’t have to overstay in power, in order to become one of the PROBLEM OF AFRICA: including a number of journalist, she only had to preside over the organized mass murder of innocent Tanzanians on the very General Election voting day.