Amnesty International marked the first anniversary of the crackdown that followed Tanzania’s 2025 general election with a finding of complete impunity. “Not a single official has been criminally investigated, let alone prosecuted and punished for the excessive force that Tanzanian security forces used against protesters,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty’s regional director for East and Southern Africa. The organisation says the violence left hundreds of people dead and thousands injured, and that over the past year security agencies have committed further violations against government critics, opposition supporters, media organisations and dissenting members of the ruling party, including acts that may amount to torture, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and abductions.
The mechanism Amnesty focuses on is legal. Authorities are increasingly weaponising counterterrorism laws to silence critics and instil fear, it said. On July 9, 2026, police spokesman David Misime announced that 130 people had been arrested over an alleged plan to organise meetings and circulate messages encouraging criminal acts intended to destabilise the country. At least 64 of those arrested were charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, according to Amnesty, which noted that terrorism related offences can prevent accused persons from obtaining bail.
The accountability track has produced paper but no publication. The Commission of Inquiry report into the 2025 election related killings was handed to President Samia Suluhu Hassan in April 2026 and has yet to be made public; she has repeatedly alleged the post election protests were funded by foreign actors in a bid to overthrow the government. In August 2026 she inaugurated a second commission, to identify those who planned, funded, coordinated or executed the violence, and also to investigate the excessive use of force and the whereabouts of missing persons.
Amnesty’s demand is specific: that the new commission examine the security forces’ role independently and publish its findings immediately on completing its mandate. “President Suluhu’s continued refusal to release the Commission of Inquiry report not only entrenches a culture of secrecy, but it also perpetuates impunity,” Chagutah said. For investors and lenders, the practical significance is that Tanzania’s post election settlement remains legally unresolved a year on, with the opposition’s treatment now running through terrorism courts rather than electoral ones.