By Brenda Wanga, NAIROBI Kenya
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been petitioned to probe the Tanzanian government over alleged violence and killings during the October general election.
The Madrid Bar Association, together with several human rights groups, is urging the ICC prosecutor to open a formal investigation into what they describe as a state-engineered assault on civilians, including murder, extermination, torture and enforced disappearances.
The petition comes as the Tanzanian government canceled the upcoming Independence Day celebrations.
Nearly a month after Tanzania went to the polls that ended up in a disputed victory for Samia Hassan, and the killings, detention and disappearances of hundreds of civilians, the heat from that election is now spreading to the ICC.
The Madrid Bar Association, the Human Rights Institute, the World Jurists’ Association and Intelwatch have petitioned the ICC in The Hague to open a formal investigation into the events that took place in the country before and after elections.
According to the petition, Tanzanian security forces have “murdered thousands of civilians, subjected hundreds to enforced disappearance, tortured thousands in detention facilities, committed sexual violence against detainees, forcibly displaced tens of thousands of indigenous Maasais, and employed cyber-enabled repression affecting millions.”
The Tanzanian elections held at the tail end of October this year were marked by violent protests, destruction of property and loss of lives as well as injuries.
Civilians turned out in the streets in various towns across the country to protest the elections where Samia Suluhu was seeking her first elected term as president.
State security agencies pressed down on protesters in what many observer missions’ reports say resulted in the targeted killing of hundreds of Tanzanian civilians.
It is these alleged atrocities that the petitioners want investigated, and they are also urging the ICC to extend the probe as far back as 2016 to cover earlier violations against Tanzanian civilians.
The petitioner, lawyer Juan Carlos Gutierrez, acting as the victim’s legal representative, says President Samia Hassan, as commander-in-chief, bears ultimate responsibility for the crimes, having explicitly authorized violence against civilians.
The Hassan’s administration is also feeling the pressure as the USA’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee has called for an immediate independent investigation into the killing of civilians by security agents in that country.
In the meantime, the government of Tanzania has cancelled the upcoming Independence Day celebrations.
The cancellation comes as intense mobilization for a planned protest by citizens on the same day.
The government has also begun releasing some of the over three hundred people who were arrested and charged with treason during the elections.
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