Election violence in Tanzania last year left at least 518 people dead, a government-appointed commission said Thursday, giving a figure far lower than opposition estimates and without specifying who was responsible.
While President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner with 98% of the vote in the October 29 election, from which key opposition figures were barred, the vote sparked several days of protests across the country, which were brutally suppressed by security forces. The opposition and religious groups claim that thousands of people were killed by security forces, while Western diplomats offer estimates ranging from 1,000 to 2,000. Ms. Hassan has sought to portray the protests as premeditated and has suggested that they were orchestrated by foreign powers.
“ The commission told us that all the violence was planned, coordinated, financed, and carried out by individuals with the training and equipment to commit crimes and acts of destruction,” she said after the report was presented. She argued that civil wars in Africa are generally fomented by foreigners who want to “continue to plunder resources.”
The report was immediately rejected by the opposition.
“In reality, this is all just a cover-up. Like many other statements by the president, this report is entirely designed to whitewash the regime’s crimes,” John Kitoka, foreign affairs chief for the opposition Chadema party, told AFP by telephone. Mohamed Chande Othman, chairman of the commission established by Hassan, said the death toll of 518 was “ neither definitive nor conclusive .” He dismissed independent reports of mass graves and bodies seized from hospital morgues, saying they “could not be corroborated.”
This is the government's first statement on the number of victims: 2,390 injured, including 120 police officers, but Mr. Othman did not specify who was responsible. "The images that circulated widely online, some were authentic, while others... had been manipulated using AI ," he said. He also indicated that some of the missing persons were "people who had disappeared for sentimental reasons and people who had abducted themselves."
Media blackout
Foreign journalists were barred from entering the country to cover the elections, and an internet blackout during and after the vote hampered efforts to assess the extent of the violence. But Hassan claimed that reports of unrest were false. He denounced " numerous distortions of information," asserting that groups and individuals had reported statistics "exaggerating the scale of events" without verification. The violence drew unusual criticism from African observers, with the African Union declaring that the election failed to meet "the standards of democratic elections."
The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), an independent digital investigation organization based in the UK, published a report in January analyzing images of the unrest and "confirming the repeated use of live ammunition by security forces and armed men in civilian clothes." It "identified potential mass graves using satellite imagery and confirmed the existence of large piles of bodies" in user-generated content, as well as images showing civilians being "assaulted" and "humiliated."
The report also provided a map of incidents for which they had authenticated footage of protesters "vandalizing buildings, starting fires, and throwing rocks at police officers ." The evidence also included verified video footage showing "shots fired at fleeing protesters, including a pregnant woman."
