As Tanzania approaches its October 2025 general elections, the political atmosphere is being described by human rights groups, opposition parties, and international observers as one of escalating repression and shrinking democratic space. Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s watch, serious allegations have emerged: enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and the exclusion of major opposition figures from the presidential contest. The question looms large—are Tanzanians witnessing democracy’s unraveling?
According to a recent briefing by Amnesty International, the Tanzanian government is accused of instilling a climate of fear through systemic human rights abuses.
he report documents cases of abductions, enforced disappearances, unlawful killings, torture, and ill-treatment of critics and political opponents. As of August 2024, the Tanganyika Law Society documented 83 missing persons under suspicious circumstances.In one incident, Ali Mohammed Kibao, a senior strategist for the opposition party Chadema, was abducted from a bus and his body later discovered dumped near the Indian Ocean.
Several other party activists and youth leaders have vanished after being picked up by uniformed or plain-clothed agents, and many remain unaccounted for.
The authorities have yet to produce transparent, credible investigations, and, in most cases, no one has been held accountable.