Tanzania electoral violence: government commission reports 518 deaths, opposition alleges cover-up
via SeneNews6 min read
A government-appointed commission in Tanzania announced that 518 people died during electoral violence in October and November, a figure significantly lower than the over 2,000 deaths reported by the opposition. The commission's president, Mohamed Chande Othman, stated that 490 males and 28 females were among the deceased, including 16 police officers and 20 children aged 5 to 17. The report also cited 2,390 injured, including 120 police. The main opposition party, Chadema, criticized the commission as neither independent nor impartial, alleging it was composed of current or past government members or the ruling party. Chadema's vice-president, John Heche, previously described the crackdown as "massacres" with over 2,000 killed and 5,000 injured in one week. Western diplomats, speaking anonymously, estimated 1,000 to 2,000 deaths. President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who won nearly 98% of the vote in an election international observers deemed fraudulent, praised the report and dismissed previous "distortions" and "exaggerated" statistics. She attributed the violence to planned, coordinated, financed, and executed actions by trained individuals, without mentioning government responsibility. Chadema official John Kitoka called the report a "cover-up operation" designed to "whitewash the regime's crimes." The commission acknowledged receiving information about missing persons but stated that allegations of mass graves could not be substantiated. The Centre for Information Resilience,
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This summary was AI-generated from a story originally published by SeneNews.
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