East African rights groups condemn Tanzania, saying human right activists ‘abandoned’ at border show signs of torture.
A Ugandan human rights activist, arrested in Tanzania after travelling to the country to support an opposition politician at a trial for treason, has been tortured and dumped at the border, according to an NGO.
Ugandan rights group Agora Discourse said on Friday that activist and journalist Agather Atuhaire had been “abandoned at the border by Tanzanian authorities” and showed signs of torture.
The statement echoes reports regarding a Kenyan activist detained at the same time and released a day earlier, and supports complaints of a crackdown on democracy across East Africa.
Atuhaire had travelled to Tanzania alongside Kenyan anticorruption campaigner Boniface Mwangi to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who appeared in court on Monday.
Both were arrested shortly after the hearing and held incommunicado.
Tanzanian police had initially told local rights groups that the pair would be deported by air. However, Mwangi was discovered on Thursday on a roadside in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border.
Agora Discourse said it was “relieved to inform the public that Agather has been found”. However, the rights group’s cofounder Jim Spire Ssentongo confirmed to the AFP news agency on Friday that there were “indications of torture”.
‘Worse than dogs’
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been accused of increasing authoritarianism, amid rising concerns regarding democracy across East Africa.
Activists travelling to Lissu’s trail accused Tanzania of “collaborating” with Kenya and Uganda in their “total erosion of democratic principles”.
Several high-profile political arrests have highlighted the rights record of Hassan, who plans to seek re-election in October.
The Tanzanian leader has said that her government is committed to respecting human rights. However, she warned earlier this week that foreign activists would not be tolerated in the country as Lissu appeared in court.
“Do not allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here,” Hassan instructed security services.
Several activists from Kenya, including a former justice minister, said they were denied entry to Tanzania as they tried to travel to attend the trial.
Following his return to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Mwangi said that he and Atuhaire had suffered a brutal experience.
“We were both treated worse than dogs, chained, blindfolded and underwent a very gruesome torture,” he told reporters.
“The Government of Tanzania cannot hide behind national sovereignty to justify committing serious crimes and human rights violations against its own citizens and other East Africans,” the International Commission of Jurists in Kenya said in a statement.