Main Kenyan lawyer and the nation’s former Justice Minister Martha Karua says she has been deported from Tanzania to stop her from attending the court docket case of opposition chief Tundu Lissu.
Two colleagues accompanying her have been additionally reportedly detained and deported after flying in from neighbouring Kenya. Tanzanian authorities haven’t but commented.
Lissu, who’s the chief of Tanzania’s foremost opposition Chadema social gathering, is because of seem in court docket on Monday after being charged with treason final month.
Karua is a revered human rights advocate, and a vocal critic of what she calls “democratic backsliding” in East Africa.
She has additionally been representing Ugandan opposition politician Kizza Besigye, who was kidnapped in Kenya final 12 months and brought again to his house nation to face treason prices.
Like Lissu, he denies the fees, arguing that they’re politically motivated.
Karua served as Kenya’s justice minister from 2005 to 2009, and was the running-mate of former Prime Minister Raila Odigna in his failed presidential bid in elections in 2022.
She launched her personal opposition social gathering, the Individuals’s Liberation Celebration (PLP), earlier this 12 months.
The PLP stated that she – together with fellow Kenyan lawyer Gloria Kimani and human rights campaigner Lynn Ngugi – have been subjected to “hours of unwarranted interrogation”, earlier than being deported.
Condemning the incident, Chadema basic secretary John Mnyika stated: “The answer to hiding the disgrace of a false treason case is to not detain overseas attorneys, however to drop the case altogether.”
The Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition stated it was shocked by the what it referred to as the “arbitrary arrests”, as Karua had been allowed into Tanzania to watch proceedings when Lissu appeared in court docket on 15 April.
Human rights teams have been more and more involved a few crackdown on the opposition in Tanzania forward of presidential and parliamentary elections due in October.
Lissu can not search bail as a result of he has been charged with treason, a criminal offense for which the utmost sentence is loss of life.
He survived an assassination try in 2017 after being shot 16 occasions.
The opposition chief was arrested in April after he held a rally underneath underneath the slogan “No Reforms, No Election”.
He’s demanding sweeping adjustments, saying Tanzania’s present legal guidelines don’t enable without cost and honest elections. The federal government denies the allegation.
Since his arrest, his Chadema social gathering has been barred from contesting the October ballot after it refused to to adjust to the electoral fee’s requirement to signal a code of conduct.
The doc requires events and their supporters to “behave nicely”, and to “preserve peace and concord” throughout the elections.
Chadema sees the code of conduct as a ploy to include the opposition, and for state repression to proceed.
The CCM social gathering, which has ruled Tanzania since 1977, is anticipated to retain energy following the newest developments.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan is anticipated to be its presidential candidate.
She was broadly praised for giving Tanzanians higher political freedom when she took workplace in 2021 following the loss of life of the incumbent, John Magufuli.
Her critics say Tanzania is as soon as once more seeing the repression that characterised Magufuli’s rule. The federal government denies the allegation.
Further reporting by Humphrey Mgonja in Nairobi