DAR ES SALAAM – Leading Kenyan and Ugandan activists were deported from Tanzania yesterday after trying to attend an opposition leader’s treason trial, a rights’ group said.

Boniface Mwangi — a prominent campaigner against corruption and police violence in Kenya — was among several regional activists who travelled to Tanzania to show solidarity with opposition leader Tundu Lissu during his court appearance on Monday.

Lissu’s Chadema party has been banned from taking part in elections due in October after insisting on reforms.

Several activists, including Kenyan presidential candidate Martha Karua, were denied entry at the airport ahead of his latest hearing, and deported.

Mwangi was arrested at his hotel in the business hub Dar es Salaam on Monday and deported the following day, along with Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire, the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition said.

Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu Hassan said Monday that foreign activists would not be allowed to interfere in the country’s affairs, and urged security organs “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here”.

Activists say the events in Tanzania are part of a wider erosion of democracy across east Africa.

In neighbouring Uganda, opposition leader Kizza Besigye is also on trial for treason after being kidnapped in Kenya and taken across the border.

Karua, the Kenyan presidential candidate, is serving as his lawyer.

She travelled to Uganda yesterday ahead of Besigye’s latest hearing the following day, and posted online that “entry was without a hitch”. 

– Nampa/AFP