[discuss-dan] FWD: [zanzinet] Zanzibar Besieged (fwd)

[Doc Rosen <drdrdoc@dr.com>]

------Original Message------
From: "Idris A. Rai" <>
To: Doc Rosen <drdrdoc@dr.com>
Sent: January 30, 2001 6:52:36 AM GMT
Subject: [zanzinet] Zanzibar Besieged (fwd)

Doc,

Thank you fo rthe e-mail and suggestions. Please visit 
BBc site
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/debates/african/newsid_1143000/1143117.stm#say
and say something for us.

Also find the below message for a broader view of the
situation.

Thanx again,
idris.
-------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 00:01:11 -0500
From: Hassan O. Ali <hassan@magma.ca>
To: ZANZINET <zanzinet@zanzinet.org>
Subject: [zanzinet] Zanzibar Besieged (fwd)


Zanzibaris Besieged by Tanzanian Security Forces

We are two concerned academics with long research
experience and close relationships with friends and
informants in Zanzibar. We have conducted
anthropological fieldwork on the island of Pemba over
the last five years. As scholars we have always
attempted to maintain critical distance from partisan
politics.  However, distressed by recent events, and
by what we feel are misleading representations of the
situation, we feel compelled to offer own analysis. We
are responding to the pressing need for informed
evaluations of the unfolding situation.

While Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa attended the
Davos Summit in Switzerland, a political storm
unleashed by his own security forces has left at least
sixty dead and dozens seriously injured in the
semi-autonomous Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar, with
serious implications for future stability in the
region.  Last week, a broad-based movement in Tanzania
prepared to hold a nation-wide, peaceful demonstration
scheduled for Saturday, January 27th, calling for a
re-run of the Zanzibar elections and constitutional
reform of the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar,
which together form the entity of Tanzania.  Police
and military, acting under orders from the Tanzanian
government, reacted with an extraordinary show of
force. In the mainland towns of Bukoba, Arusha,
Tabora, Tanga and Dar es Salaam, demonstrators were
harassed and beaten, and many were arrested.  But the
reactions of security forces to the mainland
demonstrations has been mild in comparison to the
state-sanctioned campaign of reprisals that has been
carried out in Zanzibar.

In the days preceding the demonstration, hundreds of
police from the mainland were deployed in the islands,
where they committed acts of intimidation well before
the protest began, including beating worshippers at a
mosque and killing two men, one of whom they shot in
the face.  The actions of the police and army during
and after the demonstration, officially portrayed as
efforts to "restore order" in Zanzibar, in actuality
constitute the attempts of an authoritarian regime to
suppress and punish those who would contest the
legitimacy of its rule.  The security force actions,
ordered by the Union government, and entailing a de
facto military takeover of the islands, throw
Zanzibar's status as a semi-autonomous power into
serious question.

While international media attention has been focused
on the capital city of Zanzibar Town, it is on the
neighboring, and more remote, island of Pemba that the
most egregious human rights abuses have been
committed.  Pemba is currently under a de facto
military occupation attended by the shooting of
unarmed civilians with live ammunition, beatings,
denial of medical treatment to wounded, hundreds of
detentions, looting, and rapes, which together bring
the estimated death toll on that island alone to well
over fifty.

Pemba island has been the object of state repression
and systematic underdevelopment since the Revolution
of 1964. The Revolution took place on the main island
of Unguja, and Pemba's inhabitants, because they did
not participate in, nor generally support it,  have
since been regarded by the Revolutionary and Union
governments as dangerous, disloyal citizens, and have
been treated as such. During the post-Revolutionary
period, military forces in Pemba engaged in public
beatings, humiliation, torture, rapes and the looting
of property with full state support, as part of a
campaign aimed at cowing the population and
suppressing any potential opposition.  At that time,
the Zanzibar government's unrestrained brutality
against its own citizens garnered international
condemnation.  In contrast, the international
community has been peculiarly slow to act while a
systematic campaign of human rights abuse, in the
context of a de facto military occupation of Pemba
island, is given full support by Benjamin Mkapa, Prime
Minister Frederick Sumaye, Zanzibari Vice President
Omar Ali Juma, and Tanzanian Chief of Police Omari
Mahita.

Peaceful demonstrations were planned in the towns of
Chake Chake, Wete, and Micheweni in Pemba Island.
Wearing white arm-bands to signify their commitment to
non-violence, demonstrators, including the elderly,
women, and children, braved police road blocks and
were confronted by police armed with assault rifles.
Each demonstration was met by unrestrained violence on
the part of the security forces, who, far from
ensuring the security of citizens, in fact placed it
in the gravest jeopardy. Police detachments in Wete
fired tear gas pellets and live ammunition into the
crowd both from the street and from the top of nearby
apartment buildings. A police helicopter, reportedly
carrying the Tanzanian Chief of Police Mahita swooped
in over the crowd, dropping tear gas canisters.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the helicopter may
have also dispensed artillery fire into the crowd. As
protesters fled, police gave chase, arrested at least
fifty people, and began to undertake house-to-house
searches, severely beating the inhabitants, including
women, the old and the infirm. The death toll in Wete
is now between 20 and 37, and likely to rise as
beatings continue and wounded are denied medical
treatment.

In one instance a man was shot at close range three
times in the stomach. Two young men were shot dead in
Limbani, Wete. As a relative prepared the bodies for
burial, police broke into the house and shot and
killed him. One middle-aged woman who stood in her
doorway to throw out dirty water was shot in the
thigh.  Others were wounded by rifle-fire.

Police and army then prevented ambulances and private
cars from carrying the injured to the hospital,
beating the drivers.  At least one doctor was arrested
for attending to a patient.  Relatives coming to the
hospital to claim bodies or inquire about the wounded
are subject to harrassment and beatings, and one man,
intending to retrieve his brother's corpse, was
reported shot and killed by police. Recent reports
indicate that when patients are discharged from the
hospital they are not sent home but rather taken
immediately into police custody, and charged with
participation in an illegal gathering - though many of
the dead and wounded were not involved in the
demonstration. One woman, apparently in good health
when arrested, was later sent to the hospital with a
gunshot wound in the leg. It is understood that the
injury was sustained while she was under police
custody.

One report by an eye-witness states that large numbers
of corpses have been spotted in the bush near Mtambwe
Mkuu, Wete, and informants say that the hospitals
smell of rotting bodies.  Currently the people of Wete
fear police retaliation for the beating of a police
officer which took place in a village to the north.

Since early Monday morning police have stepped up
house-to-house searches, continuing to loot property
and violently detain residents.  An estimated six
hundred reinforcements were sent to Pemba, under the
pretext of "restoring order." In our view, however,
these forces of 'security,' injuring and killing
unarmed civilians, are the very source of current
diorder.

The demonstration in Chake Chake met with military and
police force disproportionate to the intentions of the
protesters. Police sealed off the town, halted
vehicles, and beat people approaching the town center.
It is reported that security forces entered houses,
beating children and old people; they carried away
televisions, jewelry, money, and even women's
clothing.  There are many reports of rape.  At least
five people have died in Chake Chake, but one
eye-witness reports that police transported eleven
bodies from the town. Relatives are denied information
about the whereabouts of the dead.

It is difficult to gather information concerning what
occurred in the remote village of Micheweni, but we
understand that the demonstration was met by
particularly brutal measures. People were killed
during the demonstration itself, and also afterwards,
with police going so far as to shoot people in their
homes.  Reported deaths in Micheweni total at least
seven, and in Konde area, four people have reportedly
been shot dead.  There are other reports to the effect
that police shot at people on the roadsides in this
northern area. Since very few people are traveling,
and there has been almost no public transportation
between towns, it is likely that there are many more
as yet unreported casualties.

As the wounded were denied access to medical
treatment, many people attempted to transport the
injured  by boat to Mombasa, in Kenya, and Tanga, on
the Tanzanian coast, for treatment.  The Tanzanian
army has reportedly begun patrolling the air above the
channel between Pemba and the mainland.  Reports from
several independent sources, including wounded who
succeeded in reaching Kenya, state that boats
transporting the injured were sunk by helicopters
dropping bombs or by artillery fire.  Death tolls from
the event reported by BBC were twenty-four; we have
unconfirmed reports of similar events with casualties
numbering up to 200.

After the demonstration and throughout the weekend,
many people in Pemba stayed locked in their homes,
although on Monday government employees were ordered
to report to work.  On Saturday and Sunday, anyone
stepping outside faced possible reprisals from
patrolling army and police.  In some areas, young men
are in hiding in the bush, fearful of nearing the main
roads or of going home, as they are the most likely to
be beaten and arrested.  Other families are doing all
they can to send their young women out to rural areas,
away from the heaviest military patrolling, fearing
the possibility of rape. No foodstuffs have been
available since Friday, and Wete's main market has
been ransacked by police. The police have also broken
open and looted many of the larger shops in town.
People report dwindling food stocks and fear hunger in
the coming days.

Telephone communications to Pemba are audibly
monitored by third parties, and connections are often
cut if a discussion turns to details. It has been
reported that at least one person has been arrested as
a result of having discussed the situation over the
telephone.  Almost all of the opposition leadership
has been imprisoned.

As the excesses of the Tanzanian security forces in
the islands become the subject of international news
reports, readers might ask how this crisis has come
about, and why Zanzibar has not been garnered greater
international interest and concern.  The situation has
not come about suddenly and without cause.  It should
not be understood as a peculiar and inexplicable
"African crisis" with primordial roots. It is the
direct result of four decades of authoritarian rule
and the systematic silencing of free speech and brutal
quelling of opposition.

We do not intend a blanket condemnation of the
Tanzanian state. We have long admired the progressive
and tolerant principles which have ensured the
peaceful cohabitation of an impressive diversity of
ethnic and religious communities in Tanzania. We are
concerned that recent events represent a serious
erosion of these ideals.

The Zanzibar elections of 1995, the territory's first
multi-party elections since the 1964 Revolution, were
widely believed to have been rigged by the ruling
party.  They were attended by a marked lack of
transparency on the part of the Zanzibar Electoral
Commission, which was under the ruling party's
authority.  Seif Sharif Hamad, leader and presidential
candidate of the Civic United Front, the primary and
most broadly-based opposition party in the territory,
called for peace and calm.  Although many believed
that he would have won a free and fair election, Seif
Sharif undertook a long and sustained campaign for
diplomatic intervention and reconciliation.  The
ruling CCM party did nothing to placate the
opposition, instead mounting a campaign of reprisals
against its members.

True to historical form, the ruling party's actions
were specifically aimed at people from Pemba island.
Hundreds of Pembans were fired from the civil service
and others lost their homes as the Revolutionary
government razed several of Unguja's Pemban-populated
neighborhoods with neither notice nor compensation.
Seif Sharif Hamad, also Chairman of the UNPO
(Unrepresented Nations and People's Organization),
continued to call for restraint among the opposition,
a call which was heeded with extraordinary dignity and
steadfastness, as people withstood periodic looting of
their homes, arrest, and beatings.

Finally, in 1999, the Commonwealth succeeded in
brokering an agreement between CUF and CCM.  The
agreement was met by territory-wide relief and the
re-emergence of hope for a peaceful solution. But the
CCM government failed to implement the agreement, and
carried out none of its stipulations.

As Zanzibar's second multi-party elections neared in
the fall of 2000, the opposition was consistently
denied permits to hold rallies, and in one instance at
Kilimahewa, Unguja, the police shot into a seated
crowd, severely injuring six men and wounding others.
The registration period was fraught with bureaucratic
sabotage on the part of ruling party officials. The
elections themselves, as confirmed by observer
reports, were characterized by the mass ferrying of
unregistered voters by CCM party leaders to opposition
strongholds, systematic intimidation of voters, and,
ultimately, a military takeover which put departing
CCM president Salmin Amour (who objected to mainland
interference in Zanzibari affairs) under house arrest.


To forestall a clear CUF victory, the army and police
were deployed across both islands to seize all ballot
boxes, counted and uncounted, and carried out
extraordinary beatings of opposition party agents who
had been present in the polling stations to monitor
the votes.  The weeks following the elections saw riot
forces shoot into gatherings, tear gas people in their
homes, and beat passersby in the presence of
international observers and members of the press.  At
night all over Pemba and in Unguja's urban areas,
police accompanied by local militia broke into the
homes of opposition members, beat them, and arrested
scores of others.

We believe that this weekend's events are the
culmination of a long-term pattern of violent
repression and non-violent resistance. But they are
the worst since 1964, and they have contributed to the
increasing polarization of political discourse and
affiliation in Zanzibar and Tanzania as a whole.
Security forces acting under the express orders of the
Union government have created a climate in which the
possibility of reconciliation and stability in
Zanzibar is increasingly unlikely.

In response to the brutal and unwarranted actions of
the security forces to date, the University of Dar es
Salaam's Legal Aid Committee has condemned the
killings, and what it sees as "the sheer use of force
and military might without any legal backing. It is,"
their spokesman added, "a clear prelude to fascism."
Zanzibar president Amani Karume has congratulated the
police forces and the army for the "fine job they have
done of preventing violence on Zanzibar."  Yet
throughout the events of October, and of the past five
years, [most]the people of Zanzibar have demonstrated
great forbearance and an impressive commitment to
non-violence.

It is our impression that Karume's congratulation of
the police and army is an insult both to all
Zanzibaris and to the international community, as the
repressive measures taken by security forces have
themselves been the root cause of the upheaval.  They
have instigated, rather than prevented, chaos.
Furthermore, they have left Pemba under siege in a
campaign that is no longer simply about punishing the
opposition but has distinct elements of ethnocide:
scapegoating Pembans, and conflating membership in CUF
with Pembanness serves to deny the extent of
opposition to the ruling party country-wide. Karume
has publicly mourned the death of a presumably
non-Zanzibari police officer, but has extended no
condolences to the families of Zanzibaris who have
lost their lives.

The lack of a strong response from the international
community constitutes implicit support of the actions
of the security forces.  We call for a re-examination
of the current ties between the Tanzanian regime and
donor countries, and urge for a strong statement of
condemnation.  We recommend that :

1. The Red Cross and other relief agencies be allowed
immediate unrestricted access to care for the wounded,
and freely enter prisons.

2.  The press and international observers be permitted
to travel and freely gather information

3.  Tanzanian People's Defence Forces be returned to
their bases, and their numbers reduced.

4. Police be divested of live ammunition.

5. People be allowed to bury the dead with full
participation of relatives and religious authorities.

6. An international body be granted permission to
investigate and assess claims of wrongful violence,
theft, and rape.

Continued inaction on the part of the international
community, and especially the United States, suggests
complicity with a regime which clearly has little
regard for the rights of its citizens, nor for the
principles of freedom of expression, movement, and
association. We urge academics and other concerned
observers to take a stand on this crisis and to offer
informed analysis of these disturbing development.

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Somos la misma familia,
Doc
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