Dar es Salaam. CHADEMA national chairperson Freeman Mbowe said Wednesday that the main opposition party in Tanzania will sue the police’s chief in charge of operations and training, Awadh Haji, and deputy party registrar Sisty Nyahoza for civil damages over their role in the torture and abuse against party leaders and members.
Mr Mbowe told a press conference at the party’s headquarters in the city that the team of party lawyers led by CHADEMA deputy national chairperson (Tanzania Mainland), Tundu Lissu, are preparing lawsuits against the two individuals, as awe-striking reports of police brutality against harmless party cadres and officials hit the airwaves.
Mbowe’s announcement comes a day after police released 520 CHADEMA members and officials they arrested in various parts of the country since Sunday to prevent a planned International Youth Day commemoration organised by the party’s youth wing BAVICHA. Police reportedly tortured many of the cadres in what Mr Mbowe described as an “unprecedented oppression.”
“As the party, we don’t take this issue lightly,” Mr Mbowe told journalists in a packed press conference. “We believe that this was a deliberately engineered strategy that the government and its security forces implemented to humiliate us. We are not a terrorist organisation; we don’t deserve these treatments. We’ll take legal action against Awadhi Haji and Sisty Nyahoza as individual persons.”
Mr Nyahoza wrote to CHADEMA to advise against the planned Youth Day commemoration, claiming that there were signs it’d lead to civil disturbance. CHADEMA believes the letter laid the foundation for the excessive use of force by the police to prevent the commemoration from occurring, much of which was led and supervised by Haji.
READ MORE: Tanzania Police Say It Has Released 520 CHADEMA Members Arrested in a Major Opposition Crackdown
Much of the alleged torture happened at the CHADEMA’s Nyaza Zone office in Mbeya and on the roads when party members and officials were being transported to various parts of the country. It was here where the attack and abuse against the party’s secretary general, John Mnyika, alongside other party leaders, including Mr Lissu and the party’s Nyasa zone chairperson, Joseph Mbiliyi alias Sugu.
‘Behaved like thugs’
Speaking at length about his and Sugu’s ordeal at the press conference, Mr Mnyika concluded that what he saw in Mbeya broke all illusions there were about reconciliation and reforms touted by President Samia Suluhu Hassan and her cheerleaders, including the often-repeated 4R philosophy.
“Police behaved like some sort of thugs or some kind of barbarians of not this place,” Mr Mnyika narrated during the press conference. “They behaved like people under drug influence and were ordered to commit violence. They acted as if they knew what they were doing and were on a mission to deal with us.”
Mr Mnyika said he saw police attacking party people at the Mbeya office with whatever the officers had, including rods and tasers. He said Juma, the police commissioner, confronted him with abusive words after calling for him. Mnyika remembers: “He grabbed my face forcefully, took my glasses off my eyes, and broke them to pieces.”
Immediately after that, officers accompanying the commissioner, armed to the teeth, surrounded Mr Mnyika and started kicking him with boots and rods. He went on: “I thought I was going to die or seriously hurt. To save myself, I screamed at the top of my voice so that the people I was with, and who had no idea what I was up to, could hear me.
“I screamed, ‘You’re killing me’; ‘You’re killing me.’ Loudly. Then, one officer grabbed me and threw me into the police patrol car. I found Sugu already in the car but in a very terrible shape, indicating that he was seriously beaten.
“While in the car, a police officer hit me heavily with a rod at the knee. [Awadh] Juma showed up again, asking if we possessed mobile phones. I said I had lost one of my phones. I never got that phone back. Awadh ordered Sugu to be taken to Iringa and me to be taken to Njombe.
“Police ordered us to lay with our faces down while in the patrol car. I laid thus from Mbeya to Makambako [in Njombe], a distance of about 173 kilometres, in the dead of the night, very cold and in an open car. Police forced us to lie by kicking us with their boots or hitting our feet with their rods. Sugu started crying, indicating that he was seriously in pain.”
In Makambako, Mr Mnyika was denied access to a doctor, a lawyer and his family. He was eventually transported to Dar es Salaam, where he was granted bail and escorted to his house.
No justification
“From what I witnessed, what happened to me personally and the ordeals of others like Sugu’s that I saw, I can confidently conclude that police tortured us unjustifiably,” Mr Mnyika said during the press conference. “There was no justification whatsoever for police to treat me and others in the way that they did. It was absolutely unnecessary.”
READ MORE: CHADEMA’s Vice Chairperson Tundu Lissu Arrested Alongside Other Top Officials in Police Crackdown Against Youth Day Celebration
Mr Lissu, whom police also attacked, shared the same conclusion at the press conference, pointing out that the torture and other abuse were uncalled for as no one at the CHADEMA Mbeya office resisted arrest or refused to cooperate with orders police had previously made.
“Police attacked party people with tasers and teargas,” Mr Lissu, who came second in the 2020 presidential elections after John Magufuli of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), narrated. “Led by Awadh Juma, the police behaved very violently and brutally.
“Awadh violently removed a cap off my head and my glasses off my eyes. He ordered me to climb a police patrol car. When I told him I could not because of my physical inability, he sneeringly told me, ‘Then why did you come here? I was eventually picked up by two police officers and thrown into the waiting vehicle.
“I informed the police that my health condition requires me to take medication regularly. When I asked the police for my medication, they refused to provide it to me. They transported me to Dar es Salaam, leaving my medication in Mbeya,” said Mr Lissu, who described police’s ban on BAVICHA’s Youth Day commemoration as “blatantly illegal.”
During the press conference, Mr Mbowe announced that Mr Sugu is still recuperating at the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH). The CHADEMA leader thanked everyone who made noises to secure the release of party members and officials, saying that the party was grateful for its support over the past few days.
One Response
We are heading to a bad destination. My beating Chadema members and leaders this far, the police have given them promotion and a political party. Read Skinners theory of reinforcement to understand the psychology of human behaviour: Every time you give attention to a behaviour, you reinforce it. Some punishments do actually Harden the punished and reduce the humanity of the punisher. We need to learn from history. Even Jesus Christ, after being killed and all his followers decimated, his movement thrives on! Mandela and his colleagues, suffered: see what happened. We have scholars in the cabinet. Introduce a psychology department in the Police force.
And you Chanzo, I hope you are an objective media group. Get a balanced publication of the news. Where are the voices of the young people who were bitten up? Is it only these leaders’ views that matter?
Simplicity is the enemy of the truth; yet a friend of change!