Kenya’s Foreign Ministry protests after Tanzania denies access to Boniface Mwangi

Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday said Tanzanian authorities have denied it access to activist Boniface Mwangi since he was arrested in Dar es Salaam on Monday.

Mwangi was arrested by suspected military officers after travelling to observe Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu’s treason trial on Monday. His whereabouts remain unknown.

In a statement, the ministry said “despite several requests, officials of the Government of Kenya have been denied consular access and information to Mr Mwangi.”

“The Ministry is also concerned about his health, overall wellbeing and the absence of information regarding his detention,” it said.

Nairobi urged Dodoma to “expeditiously and without delay” facilitate consular access to or release of Mwangi, per international legal obligations and diplomatic norms.

Kenya and Tanzania are state parties to the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which provides that consular officers shall be free to communicate with nationals of the sending state and to have access to them.

Further, consular officers have the right to visit a national of the sending state who is in prison, custody or detention, to converse and correspond with him, and to arrange for his legal representation.

The Kenyan activist’s wife, journalist Njeri Mwangi, on Wednesday said she had visited the Tanzania High Commission in Nairobi where officials told her they did not have information about her husband.

“I last spoke to Boniface on Monday afternoon. The Tanzanian authorities are saying they have deported him but why is there no communication? Where is Bonnie?” she told reporters in Nairobi.

“Give us back Boniface, wounded or dead. It has been very agonising for my family and it is not fair or right what they are doing to him.”

On Tuesday, a Tanzanian rights group said they had been told by police that Mwangi and fellow Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire, who was also arrested in Dar, had been deported.

However, Amnesty International said the duo was held incommunicado by military officers.

Mwangi was among several East African activists and lawyers who travelled to Tanzania to stand in solidarity with Lissu.

Most were, however, denied entry upon landing at the Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam on Sunday and Monday, detained then later deported to Nairobi.

Later on Monday, President Samia Suluhu told a televised address that foreign activists would not be allowed to “interfere” in Tanzania's affairs.

"We have started to observe a trend in which activists from within our region are attempting to intrude and interfere in our affairs," she said, urging her security and defence organs “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here."

The latest events have sparked uproar over what critics see as a worrying trend of arbitrary arrest and persecution of opposition figures and their supporters in the larger East African region.

In Uganda, opposition leader Kizza Besigye is also facing treason charges and Kenya’s Foreign Ministry has admitted “cooperating with the Ugandan authorities” in his November abduction in Nairobi, where he was then taken across the border for trial in a Kampala military court.