Tanzanian authorities have detained a leading Kenyan activist and a Ugandan journalist who tried to attend an opposition leader’s treason trial, a rights group said Tuesday.
Amnesty International said that Boniface Mwangi — a prominent campaigner against corruption and police violence in Kenya — and Ugandan journalist Agatha Atuhaire were being held in “secret” after being arrested Monday.
Mwangi and Atuhaire were among activists who went to Tanzania to show solidarity with opposition leader Tundu Lissu during his court appearance on Monday.
“We need sharp international media attention on the disappearance of Kenyan Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan Agatha Atuhire who have been held incommunicado by military officers,” said Irungu Houghton, Amnesty International’s director in Kenya, in a message to AFP.
“Their Tanzanian lawyers were informed they were to be deported but the authorities have gone silent and their whereabouts unknown,” Houghton added.
“We are beginning to treat this as an abduction. We need to establish their location and condition and press for them to be returned to their respective homes.”
A Tanzanian rights group said earlier that they had been told by police that the activists had been deported.
But Mwangi’s wife, Njeri, told AFP that the police had “lied”.
“He was picked up by military vehicles. They said they were deporting him but they’ve not. They have just been leading us on. They say they are getting the next flight, but nothing,” she told AFP by telephone.
Lissu’s Chadema party has been banned from taking part in elections in October after demanding reforms.
Several activists, including Kenyan presidential candidate Martha Karua, were denied entry at Dar es Salaam airport ahead of Monday’s hearing and deported.
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan said Monday that foreign activists would not be allowed to interfere in Tanzania’s affairs and urged security services “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here”.
Activists say the events in Tanzania are part of a wider erosion of democracy across east Africa.
In neighbouring Uganda, opposition leader Kizza Besigye is also on trial for treason after being kidnapped in Kenya and taken across the border. Karua is acting as a lawyer for him.
