Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who was charged with treason last year, has started a hunger strike to protest his inability to \u200baccess his lawyers, his party said.<\/p>\n
Lissu, who leads the CHADEMA opposition party and came second in the 2020 presidential election, began refusing food on Monday after his lawyers were denied entry to the prison where he is being \u200bheld, party spokesperson Brenda Rupia wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Tanzania Prisons Service spokesperson \u200bElizabeth Mbezi said it would give an update on Lissu \u2060soon. Government spokesperson Gerson Msigwa did not immediately respond to a request \u200bfor comment.<\/p>\n
Lissu was charged with treason over what prosecutors said was a speech \u200bcalling on the public to rebel and disrupt last year’s general election. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which his lawyer has said are politically motivated.<\/p>\n
Tanzania’s electoral \u200bcommission had barred CHADEMA from participating in the polls after it failed \u200bto sign a code of conduct document.<\/p>\n
The election was marred by protests and unrest, with \u200ca \u2060government-appointed commission of inquiry saying the violence that broke out afterwards killed at least 518 people and blaming the protesters for the violence.<\/p>\n
CHADEMA’s Chief Legal Counsel, Rugemeleza Nshala, told journalists on Saturday that Lissu had planned the strike \u200bbecause he was \u200bdenied privacy during \u2060talks with his lawyers in violation of a court order.<\/p>\n
The court is due to deliver its judgement in Lissu’s \u200bcase on November 6.<\/p>\n
Lissu’s detention, along with the alleged \u200babductions of \u2060government critics, has shone a spotlight on the human rights record of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who won the 2025 election.<\/p>\n
The government has rejected accusations of \u2060widespread \u200brights abuses and said it is committed \u200bto respecting human rights. It ordered an investigation into reports of abductions in 2024, though no \u200bofficial findings have been made public.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8477,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-49154","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49156,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49154\/revisions\/49156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=49154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}