On Monday, June 2nd, Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi shared a disturbing account of torture and sexual assault he claims to have suffered at the hands of Tanzanian authorities. Mwangi, who traveled to Dar es Salaam in May to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu during a court hearing, was detained along with Ugandan journalist Agather Atuhaire. The two were held for several days incommunicado before being forcibly deported to their respective countries.
Mwangi revealed that the ordeal began shortly after he arrived at his hotel in Dar es Salaam. He said that in the early hours of the morning, unknown individuals knocked on his door, demanding that he accompany them. After initially refusing, Mwangi was eventually ambushed and taken to immigration offices, where he was photographed, fingerprinted and questioned.
“They told me to strip naked. When I did, they removed my handcuffs and four men grabbed me. They tied me upside down and began beating my feet,” Mwangi recalled. “They put lubricant in my rectum and began inserting objects in my backside. The entire abuse was recorded and they threatened to share the footage if I spoke out.”
Mwangi described the violence as both physical and psychological, revealing that throughout the ordeal, the perpetrators repeatedly shouted, “Thank you, Samia,” referring to Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu.
In a tearful statement, Mwangi accused the Kenyan government of failing to intervene in his detention. “My government let me down. They sided with Suluhu’s government and claimed we were interfering with Tanzanian politics,” he said. “But we were not. We came to support a fellow human rights defender.”
Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire, who was detained alongside Mwangi, echoed his account, expressing her shock and disappointment at the treatment they received in Tanzania. “I’ve always lived under a dictatorship in Uganda, but I never thought I would experience something worse in Tanzania,” Atuhaire said.
The brutal treatment of Mwangi and Atuhaire has ignited a wave of outrage across East Africa, with human rights groups calling for accountability and immediate investigations into the actions of Tanzanian authorities. The incident has raised serious questions about the safety of foreign nationals in Tanzania and the state of human rights in the region.
