A UGANDAN human rights activist has accused Tanzanian security operatives of subjecting her to rape and torture during a secretive detention this past week, in what is fast becoming a regional human rights flashpoint.
Agather Atuhaire, who heads the Uganda-based Agora Centre for Research, told the BBC that she was violently assaulted after being arrested alongside Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi. The two had travelled to Tanzania to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who appeared in court on treason charges.
Atuhaire said she was blindfolded, stripped, beaten and sexually assaulted by people in plain clothes, adding that the experience left her screaming in pain.
‘The pain was too much,’ she said, showing a scar on her wrist where she said handcuffs were tightly fastened. ‘They had to cover my mouth because I was screaming so hard.’
Held incommunicado, dumped at the border
Both Atuhaire and Mwangi were arrested shortly after being denied entry to Lissu’s court hearing on Monday, May 19. Although they had been permitted into the country, they were barred from attending proceedings.
They were then held incommunicado for three days. Atuhaire was later found abandoned at the Uganda-Tanzania border on Thursday night, while Mwangi was left along a roadside near the Kenyan frontier.
Mwangi has also alleged he was tortured, saying in a post on X that they were forced to crawl to wash off their blood after being beaten. ‘We couldn’t walk. We had been tortured and were told to strip naked,’ he wrote.
Atuhaire said she could hear Mwangi screaming in a nearby room, and that he was threatened with forced circumcision.
Government silence sparks backlash
Tanzanian authorities have yet to comment publicly on the incident, but the detentions have sparked regional condemnation. Kenya’s government lodged a formal protest on Wednesday, accusing Tanzania of denying it consular access to Mwangi despite repeated attempts.
Meanwhile, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had warned on the same day of the activists’ arrest that foreign campaigners would not be allowed to ‘meddle’ in domestic matters or cause ‘chaos’.
Atuhaire’s rights group, Agora, previously said she showed ‘signs of torture’. She has now gone further, describing the ordeal in graphic detail in her interview with the BBC.
Regional rights groups demand inquiry
Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights shared a photo of Mwangi reunited with his family on Thursday. Mwangi said their captors followed orders from a ‘state security’ official who instructed that he receive ‘a Tanzanian treatment’.
Fred Mwesigye, Uganda’s high commissioner to Tanzania, confirmed that Atuhaire had ‘safely returned home’ and was ‘warmly received by her family’.
Human rights organisations across East Africa are now demanding a full investigation and urging governments to uphold treaty commitments on the protection of civil liberties.
