Tanzania: Recent Election Highlights the Dangers of Disenfranchisement in Zanzibar

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Tanzania's fundamentally flawed elections in late October, and the additional repression unleashed in their immediate aftermath, have provoked international alarm and criticism. From pre-election conditions that stifled free speech and criminalized civic action to election-day irregularities including communications blackouts and ballot box tampering, the entire exercise lacked credibility, making the anodyne statements of the Southern African Development Community nothing short of embarrassing. When opposition leaders are arrested in the aftermath of an election and shortly afterward must flee the country fearing for their lives, there are no congratulations in order for anyone.

But sometimes lost in the sheer quantity of alarming news stories about Tanzania's slide into authoritarianism is the fact that the people of Zanzibar, the semiautonomous region off the coast of mainland Tanzania, have been repeatedly denied their civil and political rights, even in the era when the rest of the country appeared to be on a democratic trajectory.

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