Kenyan human rights campaigner Boniface Mwangi broke down in tears Monday as he recounted brutal treatment including “sexual torture” at the hands of Tanzanian security forces which he said left him broken.
Award-winning Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire, who was with Mwangi when they were both abducted in Tanzania on May 19, had previously made similar allegations to AFP.
They were detained in Tanzania’s economic capital, Dar Es Salaam, where they had travelled to offer support to Tanzanian opposition figure Tundu Lissu, facing a potential death sentence in a treason trial, ahead of elections in October.
“They take you through sexual torture, and tell you if you speak, you’re going to be reported to your family and all that,” said Mwangi, addressing a press conference alongside Atuhaire.
“And what they did to us is, it breaks me. Then they started beating my feet… I was screaming so hard. I couldn’t breathe. There were no tears coming out because of how painful it was.”
“They would put objects in my anus and then say, ‘say you’re feeling nice, say you’re feeling good’. Then they would say, ‘say asante (thank you) Samia, asante Samia’, so I say asante to their president,” Samia Suluhu Hassan, said Mwangi.
“We’re here to share our story, and to say that our bodies may be broken, but our spirit is strong,” he added.
President Hassan has accused foreign activists of attempting to “intrude and interfere” in Tanzania’s affairs.
On the day Atuhaire and Mwangi were arrested, she urged security services “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here”.
Such comments have seen the opposition and rights groups accuse Hassan of following the same authoritarian path as predecessor John Magufuli, whom she succeeded in 2021.
Tanzania is slated to hold presidential and legislative elections in October, with the east African nation of some 65 million people having been run by the same party since independence in 1961.
