‘They Killed Us Like Animals’: Tanzanian Families Search for Loved Ones After Post-Election Massacre

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – In the wake of a deeply contested presidential election, a shadow of terror and grief has fallen over Tanzania, where a brutal state-sponsored crackdown has left a trail of death and devastation. Across the East African nation, families are now caught in a nightmarish search for the bodies of their loved ones, navigating a labyrinth of official obstruction and pervasive fear.

The Washington Post, in a detailed report based on sixteen interviews with individuals throughout Tanzania, has chronicled a post-election reality marked by rampant, indiscriminate killings by security forces and a staggering death toll that activists and the opposition Chadema party believe exceeds one thousand people.

While the American newspaper stated it could not independently confirm the precise number of fatalities, the accounts it gathered paint a harrowing picture of a nation plunged into mourning and terror.

The government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan has, according to The Post, released no official figures, maintaining a resolute silence as its citizens desperately seek answers and the remains of their kin.

The violence, which witnesses described to The Washington Post as both targeted and indiscriminate, was carried out by men in police and military uniforms as well as in plainclothes. The eruption of chaos on October 29 was the culmination of months of escalating political tensions surrounding an election that was widely perceived as little more than a coronation for President Hassan.

In the months leading up to the vote, her government had moved decisively to crush dissent; her primary challenger, Tundu Lissu of the Chadema party, was jailed on charges of treason, and both his party and the other main opposition group were ultimately barred from fielding any candidates.

Activists had meticulously recorded the abductions of over one hundred government critics by state security forces, including a former ambassador, setting a grim prelude for the bloodshed to come. Still, few could have foreseen the sheer scale of the bloody repression that would be unleashed on election day and in its aftermath.

When protesters took to the streets of major cities on October 29, their frustration was palpable. They ripped down posters bearing the president’s image, set tires ablaze in the streets, and defiantly shouted “we do not want Mama,” a pointed reference to President Hassan, who was vying for her first full term under the banner of the long-ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party.

The state’s response was immediate and overwhelming. As reported by The Washington Post, soldiers were on the streets within hours. Police were captured on film firing their weapons from the back of white Toyota Land Cruisers directly into crowds of demonstrators. The violence was not confined to public spaces.

In chilling accounts provided to The Post, witnesses recounted how victims were hunted down, followed into the sanctuary of their own homes, and shot dead as their friends and families watched in horror.

The human cost of this repression is etched in the stories of its victims, as shared with The Washington Post. In Dar es Salaam, the country’s sprawling commercial hub, a young mother named Joselini was driving when she was stopped by armed men wearing masks.

A friend of Joselini, who later spoke to witnesses at the scene for The Post, recounted the horrific details: when Joselini rolled down her car window, the men shot her three times in the chest. In an act of unimaginable cruelty, one of her two young children was in the vehicle with her when she was killed.

In another part of the city, a 25-year-old woman named Khadija was at home with a close friend, the two having decided to rest after participating in the protests the day before. The friend told The Post that around 5 p.m., Khadija went to use an outdoor toilet. She was met by two armed men in civilian clothes. Neighbors who later spoke to Khadija’s friend said they heard gunshots and hid in fear. When they emerged, they found Khadija lying in a pool of her own blood.

The wave of violence extended far beyond the capital, according to the report.

A human rights activist informed The Washington Post that in the towns of Mbea and Tunduma, two individuals were shot and killed while they were merely seated on the verandas of their homes, caught in a deadly dragnet that did not distinguish between protester and bystander. In the northern city of Arusha, a 41-year-old business executive, Elia Anaeli Kimaro, was shot while walking to a local market.

A relative of Kimaro told The Post that he later bled to death. “He was not participating in the protests. He was running his errands,” the relative stressed, emphasizing the indiscriminate nature of the killings. The relative remembered Kimaro as a good father whose son had just completed the seventh grade.

Their final conversation had been about the boy’s future, about where he wanted to go to school next. “I will remember him as a person who loved friends and was always happy,” the relative shared with The Post.

Amid the carnage, the government declared its victory. Tanzania’s electoral commission announced that President Hassan had received a staggering 97 percent of the 31 million votes cast. However, international observers voiced grave concerns.

An observation mission from the Southern African Development community issued a statement declaring that voters in most areas of the country were not able to express their democratic will. Similarly, an African Union mission concluded that Tanzania had failed to comply with its “international obligations and standards” for a fair election.

The results prompted a sharp rebuke from Washington, a longtime ally of Tanzania. United States Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the social media platform X to declare the elections “fraudulent” and called for a thorough review of the American relationship with the country.

As the state-sanctioned violence unfolded, the government simultaneously moved to control the flow of information.

According to The Washington Post, a curfew was declared in Dar es Salaam on voting day, and the internet was cut off across the entire country, initiating a five-day blackout that plunged the nation into an information vacuum.

The Legal and Human Rights Centre, identified by The Post as the country’s most prominent rights organization, confirmed that the outage made it impossible for them to dispatch monitors to document and report on the unfolding human rights violations.

The fear was so intense that some journalists were reportedly afraid to cover the violence. The Citizen, a popular newspaper, was one of the few outlets with reporters on the ground but was unable to publish its findings because of the internet blockade. “Our silence was not abandonment,” the paper’s executive editor later clarified in a statement on Instagram. “We just did not have the means to reach you.” 

The Post also spoke with several activists who had gone into hiding and were contemplating dangerous journeys to seek refuge in neighboring Kenya, terrified of being apprehended at police checkpoints. “There is extreme fear for everyone,” Kenyan activist Mwanse Ahmed, who has been in close contact with her Tanzanian colleagues, told The Post. “If it wasn’t for the massive efforts of brave activists sending videos to us, and the people recording them on their phones, the world would have no idea of the scale of the killings.”

For the families of the victims, the election’s bloody aftermath has descended into a second, more personal form of torture: the agonizing search for the missing.

Rights groups estimate that hundreds of bodies remain unaccounted for, leading to fears that they may have been disposed of in mass graves to hide the evidence of the slaughter. John Kitoka, a rights activist with the Chadema party, told The Washington Post that mortuary attendants across the nation—in Mbea, Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Arusha, Songwe, and Iringa—had confirmed a massive and sudden influx of corpses.

“There are still a lot of missing bodies,” Kitoka stated. The story of John Okoth Ogutu, a 34-year-old Kenyan citizen who had taught English at a private school in Dar es Salaam for eight years, is a case in point. His sister, Celestine, recounted the story to The Washington Post.

On election day, Okoth and a colleague went out to pick up dinner when the streets appeared to have calmed. They were suddenly confronted by police officers who began shooting indiscriminately. Okoth was struck by a bullet and fell to the ground. His friend managed to escape into nearby woods, where he hid for two hours and witnessed what happened next: Okoth’s body, along with six others, was loaded into a car and driven away. Though the school was informed that his body had been taken to the Mwananyamala morgue, colleagues who went to identify him were denied entry. School officials told his family they visited every single mortuary in the city but could not find his body.

The authorities appear to be systematically preventing families from recovering their dead, a cruel tactic seemingly designed to suppress evidence. The brother of an engineering student, who was among six men fatally shot in a Dar es Salaam restaurant as they ate lunch, shared his harrowing experience with The Washington Post.

Witnesses told him his brother was shot in the head and chest by armed men in plainclothes. When he went to the nearest mortuary to recover the body, he was refused access. He was explicitly told that the authorities were not releasing the dead, “because they know if they do, you will take a picture of the bullet wounds.” Desperate, he said he had to bribe the police to have the body released.

Then, when officers told him he could not use his own car to transport his brother home, he was forced to pay nearly $500 to rent an ambulance that could pass through police checkpoints without being stopped.

The trauma in his village is immense; there have already been five funerals. Recounting how a co-worker’s aunt was shot in her house in front of her four children, he asked The Post, in a voice filled with anguish and disbelief, “Are these people really Tanzanians? Because they killed us like animals.”

In her only comments on the violence, delivered as she took the oath of office, President Hassan said that “all of us who wish this country well have been saddened and distressed by the incidents of disruption of peace, loss of life and destruction of public and private property.” Yet, her government’s actions have directly contradicted this sentiment.

On Monday, Tanzanian police sent out mass text messages to citizens with a clear warning: it was now illegal to send photos or videos of the dead. “Avoid sharing images or videos that are disturbing or demeaning to someone’s dignity,” the message read. “Doing so is a criminal offense.” For activists, this is a clear attempt to enforce silence and erase the memory of the state’s victims.

“We are trying to get people mobilized … and organize a national mourning day,” Tanzanian rights activist Maria Sarungi told The Post, explaining the effort is to force the authorities to “have to acknowledge the deaths and give back the bodies.” For families like that of John Okoth Ogutu, the waiting is unbearable.

His sister Celestine told The Washington Post she does not know what to tell their mother, who “keeps asking me when the body is coming.” Just this Wednesday, she received a video of her brother, lying on the ground bleeding in the moments after he was shot. Her final words to The Post encapsulate the profound and senseless tragedy that has befallen her family and her nation: “He died with two pens in the front pocket of his shirt, because he was just a teacher.”