I write these words with a heavy heart, my soul crushed by the inhumanity I have witnessed and the brutal stories I carry with me. Not as a rumour or an allegation but as a truth so horrifying that it will forever stain the conscience of our continent if left unchallenged.
Boniface Mwangi and Uganda’s Agather Atuhaire were two brave and unarmed citizens of Africa who were subjected to four days of unspeakable torture in Tanzania. This was not in secret detention camps of a rogue militia but at the hands of Tanzanian state security agents. A country that boasts of peace and hospitality has now been cast into infamy for acts that no human being should ever suffer. Acts that can only be described as crimes against humanity.
Mr Mwangi and Ms Atuhaire were arrested from their hotel hours after landing in Tanzania. To date, the Tanzanian authorities have not declared what crime they were accused of. The first thing their captors did was to ensure they were naked. Their dignity was stripped from them in the most degrading way possible. Their hands and knees were bound tightly to a horizontal metal pole. Then came the beatings. Brutal, rhythmic and merciless. Pipes and sticks rained down on the soles of their feet. With every strike, they screamed. The rooms where they were held echoed with raw, guttural cries of pain that could shatter stones. Their tormentors were merciless, every stroke came with the mightiest of force.
When their feet became numb and could no longer feel pain as naturally nerves would collapse after such sustained trauma, one of the officers would apply oil on their swollen, bruised feet. The purpose? To stimulate blood flow so the pain receptors could wake up again. Then the beatings would resume. More intense, more vicious. Every session felt like a deliberate lesson in how far cruelty could stretch. Such torture that can only be likened with what is remembered of the medieval times.
But that was not the end. The torture extended into the realm of sexual violence. A cruelty so vile it tears at the very foundation of humanity. I will spare the graphic details here out of respect for the dignity of Mwangi and Atuhaire . However, let me say this, no person, woman or man, should ever be subjected to what they went through.
Through it all, their tormentors demanded they say the words: “Asante Mama Samia” (Thank you, Mama Samia) – a grotesque, Orwellian chant of forced gratitude to the very system breaking their bodies and spirits. This was not discipline. This was not interrogation. This was pure, state-sanctioned sadism.
According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is defined as:
“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from them or a third person information or a confession, punishing them for an act they or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing them… when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official.”
Torture is a crime under international law. It is outlawed in the constitutions and legal frameworks of virtually every country in the world, including Tanzania. Article 13(6)(e) of the Constitution of Tanzania clearly prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The Penal Code of Tanzania also criminalises acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. Yet the state’s security agents, acting in full authority and impunity, violated these very laws. The silence of the Tanzanian government since then has also been both deafening and damning.
What perhaps hurts most deeply is not only the actions of the security agencies, horrific as they were, but the disgraceful defence mounted by members of Tanzania’s own Parliament. Instead of upholding the rule of law and demanding accountability, many parliamentarians, some of them women, stood before the nation and defended the torturers, the sexual violators and the unlawful detention of two innocent people. The irony is brutal. That women leaders, who should be at the forefront of condemning rape and abuse, instead cloaked themselves in nationalism to defend it. Their utterances were not only dispensable but shameful. They betrayed the struggles of every African woman who has ever fought for her dignity and right to be free from violence.
Security agencies are like a saw. They cut forward and they cut backward. Today they may serve the interests of the powerful but one day, inevitably, they will turn on those who shielded them. When that time comes, the blade will cut even deeper.
This is a cry for justice. A call to conscience. To Mwangi and Atuhaire, we see you. We believe you. We stand with you.
To Tanzania’s leaders, your attempts to bury the truth beneath official silence and reckless rhetoric will not succeed. Justice does not forget. History does not forget. Africa will not forget. We will pursue every legal and diplomatic channel available at the local, regional and international levels.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court if necessary. No stone will be left unturned until justice is done. Not only for Mwangi and Atuhaire, but for every African who dares to speak truth to power.
To Tanzania’s civil society, lawyers, journalists and religious leaders, your silence now is complicity. This is your country, your laws, your people. Speak up. Demand justice. Remember, if it happened to Mwangi and Atuhaire, it can happen to you. Those torturers remain in your country, they remain among your security forces. How sure are you that you will not be their next victims?
We must stand for justice not just for us but for Africa’s future generations. So that they may one day read about this and know that when horror crept into our continent in the shadow of flags and anthems, there were those who stood up. Those who said no. Those who called torture by its name. Those who refused to let brutality wear the face of patriotism.
By Hussein Khalid