Amnesty International Report 1997 - Tanzania
- Document source:
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Date:
1 January 1997
Prisoners of conscience were among scores of government opponents arrested and briefly detained on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. Many were held without charge or trial; others faced criminal charges and were denied bail. Scores of political prisoners were tortured and ill-treated on the islands. Prison conditions were poor and at least nine prisoners were reported to have died. Courts imposed sentences of caning. More than 50 possible extrajudicial executions took place on the mainland. Over 500,000 Rwandese refugees were forced to return to Rwanda. Political tension remained high on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba where political opponents accused the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Party of the Revolution, led on the islands by Salmin Amour, of using intimidation and ballot rigging to win the October 1995 presidential and parliamentary elections. The authorities were responsible, both before and after local elections in March 1996, for further harassment, sometimes violent, of supporters of the main opposition party, the Civic United Front (CUF), which boycotted the elections on Zanzibar but won large majorities on Pemba. The CUF was repeatedly denied permits to hold meetings and rallies. After the elections hundreds of Pemba islanders working on Zanzibar, many of them government employees, were dismissed and their houses demolished. Others were expelled from the island. Newspapers which carried reports critical of the government were banned or threatened with closure. In the northwest of the country, the mainland was host to over 700,000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire for most of the year. Although the border remained officially closed, tens of thousands continued to arrive; 40,000 refugees from Rwanda and Burundi were admitted during the first half of the year and tens of thousands more crossed Lake Tanganyika from Zaire in November and December. In December, in a statement endorsed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the government announced that all Rwandese refugees were expected to leave the country by the end of the year. CUF supporters were among scores of government opponents arrested during the year on Zanzibar and Pemba. Many were prisoners of conscience and were detained without charge or trial beyond the 48 hours allowed by Zanzibar law. In February, CUF member of parliament Mussa Haji Kombo was held without charge or trial for over two weeks after he held a public meeting for which the authorities had refused permission. Suleiman Seif Hamad, a member of the CUF's national executive, and Mtumwa Khatib were detained without charge or trial for two weeks in March after violent clashes between villagers and the police in Shengejuu, on Pemba. Criminal charges such as sedition, vagrancy, and involvement in acts of violence, often accompanied by the denial of bail for periods of two weeks or more, were also used as a method of intimidating government critics and opponents. In one such case in January, the editor and publisher of the Swahili newspaper Majira were charged with sedition. The charges were dropped in February but the newspaper remained banned and at least one journalist working for Majira was prohibited from exercising his profession. In April, charges of stealing firearms, brought against CUF member of parliament Salim Yusuf Mohamed after he had spent nearly two weeks in detention following the Shengejuu clashes in March, were ruled unconstitutional by the Zanzibar High Court. The authorities held him for a further 10 days. Scores of suspected government opponents were tortured and ill-treated by police and Anti-Smuggling Unit (ASU) personnel on Zanzibar and Pemba; on the mainland, criminal suspects were regularly beaten. On Zanzibar, beatings and other ill-treatment and torture were inflicted, including shaving prisoners' heads with broken glass, spraying prisoners with motor oil and forcing them to eat faeces. In March, members of the ASU on Pemba forced Osman Hamad Osman to eat faeces and then beat him unconscious before dumping him in Mgogoni. In May, six men were beaten by police officers who suspected them of holding a political meeting in Pujini, on Pemba. Overcrowding and poor conditions were reported in prisons throughout the country. Nine prisoners in Keko remand prison were reported to have died between December 1995 and February 1996 as a result of neglect and beatings. Built to house 340 prisoners, Keko remand prison held nearly 1,300 prisoners in April. Sentences of caning, a cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, were imposed, often for sexual offences against children. In March, a man was sentenced to 12 strokes of the cane and 34 years' imprisonment for defiling and sodomizing a child. In August, over 50 gold-miners were killed in what may have been extrajudicial executions during evictions from disputed land in an operation involving the police, regional authorities in Shinyanga and a Canadian mining company. The men were buried alive when the Canadian company, guarded by police, bulldozed small-scale mines in Bulyanhulu, despite on-the-spot appeals from distraught villagers, in advance of the company taking possession of the land for industrial mining. The bulldozing was authorized by the regional authorities 12 hours after a court order halting evictions pending further investigations was announced over the radio. The bodies had not been recovered by the end of the year and criminal investigations appeared to have been discontinued. Throughout the year, the government maintained a hard line on refugees from Rwanda and Burundi, forcibly returning, and refusing admission to, hundreds of thousands of people. In May and June, Tanzanian officials enforced the officially closed borders with Rwanda and Burundi more strictly, turning back over 7,000 refugees from Burundi. The refugees were mainly Rwandese Hutu fleeing assaults by the Burundi military. In May, the UN stated that an unknown number of refugees who had attempted to cross the border had been killed on return to Burundi. The Tanzanian authorities declared their intention of expelling refugees who posed a threat to security. In January, police reportedly arrested 60 refugees from Burundi and Zaire as part of a crack-down on unregistered immigrants: 32 were handed over to the UN; the fate of the others was unknown. In August, seven Rwandese refugees, members of Rassemblement pour le retour des réfugiés et de la démocratie au Rwanda, Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda, a banned organization in Tanzania, were arrested because of their political activities. They were forcibly returned to Rwanda, where they were reported to have been detained. In early December, the government issued a written statement, endorsed and co-signed by the UNHCR, which announced that all Rwandese refugees were expected to leave the country by 31 December. Refugees who feared for their safety if they returned to Rwanda were not informed of any mechanism whereby they could remain in Tanzania, or that they had any other option but to leave. Tens of thousands of refugees who fled the camps and attempted to escape into the interior of the country were intercepted by the army and police and redirected to the border. There were reports that excessive force and rape were used as means of coercion. By the end of the year, approximately 500,000 refugees had returned to Rwanda and 50,000 Rwandans remained in Tanzania. In February, Amnesty International wrote to the government of President Benjamin Mkapa calling on the authorities to abide by their international obligations not to forcibly return to Rwanda and Burundi refugees who might be at risk of human rights violations on return. In October, the organization protested to the authorities at the arrest and forcible return to Rwanda of seven Rwandese refugees. In December, Amnesty International strongly criticized the decision to impose a 31-December deadline for the return of Rwandese refugees, and appealed to the authorities to ensure protection for refugees who have a well-founded fear of human rights violations.
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