Opposition party Chadema announced that its deputy secretary-general, Amani Gorgwa, was arrested early Saturday morning.
Published November 8, 2025
Police in Tanzania have arrested opposition leaders after more than 200 people were charged with treason over a series of protests against last month’s general election.
Opposition party Chadema announced that its deputy secretary-general, Amani Gorgwa, was arrested early Saturday morning. He is the third senior Chadema official to be detained since party leader Tundu Lissu and deputy leader John Heche were arrested ahead of the October 29 vote.
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The arrests came a day after more than 200 people were charged with treason for their alleged involvement in protests sparked by the disputed election.
Lawyer Peter Kibatala told AFP news agency that more than 250 people were “indicted in three separate cases, all facing two charges.”
“The first crime is conspiracy to commit treason. The second crime is treason itself,” he said.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took office in 2021 following the death of her predecessor, won with 98% of the vote, according to the election commission, but Chadema has branded the election a “sham.”
In a statement on X, the paper said the government intended to “paralyze the party’s leadership” and “paralyze its activities,” adding that police were now targeting “lower levels” and that some people were “being forced to confess to organizing the demonstrations.”
Police confirmed the arrest of Mr. Gorgwa and nine others in connection with an investigation into a riot in which security forces launched a crackdown on protesters.
“Police are continuing a full-scale investigation in cooperation with other defense and security agencies,” police said in a statement, adding that Chadema Secretary-General John Munica and the party’s communications director Brenda Lupia were wanted.
high number of deaths
Protests broke out on October 29 in the cities of Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and Mbeya, as well as several other parts of the country, police said in a statement on Saturday, revealing for the first time the scale of the violence.
Authorities have so far refused to release the death toll.
The Catholic Church in Tanzania said hundreds of people had died. Chadema claimed that more than 1,000 people were killed and that security forces were hiding bodies to conceal the scale of the atrocity.
Neighboring country’s monitoring group, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, claimed in a statement on Friday that 3,000 people had been killed and thousands were still missing.
The commission provided a link to photographic evidence in its possession showing that many of the victims “suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest, leaving no doubt that these were targeted killings rather than crowd control actions.”
The African Union said this week that the elections were “not in accordance with the AU’s principles, normative frameworks and other international obligations and standards regarding democratic elections.”
AU observers reported instances of ballot stuffing at some polling stations and voters being issued multiple ballots.
Single-party rule has been the norm in Tanzania since multiparty politics was introduced in 1992. But Hassan has been accused of ruling with an iron fist that does not tolerate opposition.
