Tanzanian officials stated they had no longer been formally notified of the United States’ choice to add Tanzania to their cutting-edge journey ban list.
On January 31, 2020, the Trump administration confirmed an extended tour ban on six extra countries, mentioning international safety worries:
Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania. While the United States could not verify any verifiable terrorist threats, the USA singled out these nations for his or her alleged loss of cooperation when it comes to “statistics-sharing” and “identity control.” Restrictions vary in line with the country’s capability to comply with US protocols on vetting and safety features and will cross into full effect on February 21, 2020.
Tanzania’s inclusion in the modern US journey ban speaks to the intensifying diplomatic stress between the 2 nations — which have historically enjoyed a sturdy partnership as longtime allies and friends — because of Tanzania’s rapid decline of human rights.
According to US intelligence, Tanzania does now not comply with “established identification-management and information-sharing criteria,” and therefore, its citizens had been suspended from participation inside the US diversity visa program — or “lottery.” The US accused Tanzania of now not sharing terrorism-related records particularly and additionally withholding facts approximately viable Ebola cases.
In renewed and tightened protocols, all nations must difficulty electronic passports for all fundamental lessons of journey documents and that they must report misplaced or stolen passports to INTERPOL within 30 days, among other overall performance criteria.
However, Tanzania has cooperated with the USA on taking measures against terrorism inside the region governed via its Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2002 and its National Counter terrorism Center (NCTC) — especially after a sequence of suspected terrorism attacks inside the Pwani place in 2017.
The US did well known that Tanzania now problems electronic passports and complies with reporting lost and stolen documents on a month-to-month basis. But the USA also referred to as Tanzania’s procedure “slow,” “overly bureaucratic,” and “complicated through constrained technical capability,” according to the White House declaration.
The use of “temporary or emergency identity and travel files” has complex immigration-related security in Tanzania. However, the nation these days went through a protracted and complicated system to update its national identification gadget and streamline its biometric identity registration for SIM card users. While the roll out has been riddled with challenges, the authorities has been adamant approximately its strict enforcement.
Travel ban — on human rights offenders
Just as a few Tanzanian citizens had been thinking why the peaceful East African country landed on the tour ban list, a few had been additionally applauding the US choice to place a specific travel ban on Paul Makonda, the Dar es Salaam nearby commissioner.
The “top Tanzanian legit who launched a surveillance squad dedicated to searching down gay humans has been banned with the aid of the United States from getting into the country,” consistent with the BBC.
Human rights activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai thanked the USA for placing individual sanctions on Makonda:
According to an respectable White House assertion, Makonda and his wife, Mary Felix Massenge, were targeted with sanctions primarily based on Makonda’s “involvement in gross violations of human rights, which include the flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons.”
In his position as local commissioner, he “has been implicated in the oppression of the political opposition, crackdowns on freedom of expression and association, and the concentrated on of marginalized individuals,” the declaration read.
While the reasons given for the journey ban on Tanzania had been not immediately tied to human rights, it’s far possible that the White House pass is as plenty as a diplomatic, political sign to Tanzania regarding its declining human rights situation as it’s far approximately security and vetting inside the fight in opposition to worldwide terrorism:
These actions in opposition to Paul Christian Makonda underscore our problem with human rights violations and abuses in Tanzania, as well as our help for responsibility for people who engage in such violations and abuses.
Netizen Jeffrey Smith, with Vanguard Africa, warned Tanzanian human rights activists not to conflate birthday celebration over the individual journey ban towards Makonda with the overall, blanket suspension of all Tanzanian residents from participating inside the diversity visa program, visible to many as “racist” and “xenophobic”:
Human rights SOS
The deterioration of human rights in Tanzania has reached a boiling point inside the months leading up to the 2020 presidential elections.
In overdue January, opposition leader Zitto Kabwe of the Alliance for Change and Transparency Party (ACT) wrote an pressing letter to the World Bank urging them to withhold a proposed $500 million United States bucks loan earmarked for education, bringing up serious worries over deteriorating human rights beneath the Magfuli administration — especially for girls, who are presently banned from attending faculty if pregnant or parenting.
In the letter, Kabwe said that “he feared the money could be used by the ruling party ‘to distort our electoral processes’ and ensure a smooth victory in an election year,” in keeping with The Guardian. For penning this letter, seen as ‘treasonous” by way of members of the ruling Revolutionary Party, Kabwe said he has received loss of life threats, in step with the BBC.
In the runup to 2020 elections in October, a chain of human rights violations and blatant brush aside for civil society concerns have activists sounding the alarm — despite reasonable fear of retaliation.
Under the Magfuli management, journalists, human rights activists and lawyers have been abducted, detained, imprisoned on trumped-up fees and targeted underneath more and more draconian legal guidelines and measures to quell dissent.
In a scathing op-ed for African Arguments, Kabwe said that Tanzania, as soon as a “beacon of peace and stability in a location characterized via civil unrest,” turned into now on the point of crisis — except the international network acts soon.