Opposition denounces election violence report

Tanzania's electoral violence last year left at least 518 dead, a government-appointed commission has said, giving a figure far below opposition estimates and failing to say who was responsible, reports France24. While President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared to have won 98% of the vote in the 29 October election – in which key opposition figures were barred from running – the polls triggered days of protests around the country that were brutally suppressed by security forces. Opposition and religious groups say thousands were killed by security forces, while Western diplomats have given estimates between 1 000 and 2 000. Hassan sought to depict the protests as pre-planned and implied they were orchestrated by foreigners. ‘The commission has told us that all the violence was planned, co-ordinated, financed and executed by people with training and equipment for committing crimes and destruction,’ said Hassan after the report was presented. The report was immediately dismissed by the opposition. ‘It's all a cover-up actually. Like many other statements that the President has made, the report is all designed to whitewash the regime's crimes,’ John Kitoka, head of foreign affairs for the Chadema opposition party, told AFP. Mohamed Chande Othman, head of the commission set up by Hassan, said the toll of 518 was ‘not final and conclusive’. He rejected independent reports of mass graves and bodies being seized from hospital mortuaries, saying they ‘could not be substantiated’. It is the first government statement on casualty figures – 2 390 were wounded, including 120 police officers – but Othman did not state who was responsible. The violence triggered rare criticism from African observers, with the African Union saying the election did not comply with ‘standards for democratic elections’.