Kenyan lawyer and political firebrand Miguna Miguna has urged the United States to move beyond symbolic sanctions and directly target Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
Migun accused Samia’s administration of unleashing a campaign of terror and bloodshed after the country’s fiercely disputed 2025 election.
In a blistering post on X, Miguna scoffed at the US decision to sanction Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Faustine Jackson Mafwele, dismissing it as mere “colonial smoke and mirrors”.
To Miguna, the punishment landed far too low in the chain of power.
“The person responsible for the atrocities,” he declared, “is Samia Suluhu.”
His shocking words came just hours after the US put sanctions on Mafwele because of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “credible allegations” that the officer was involved in the detention, torture, and sexual assault of Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire in Dar es Salaam.
Sanctioning a corporal who doesn’t even know how to spell “Britain”, has no visa, no foreign bank account and cannot travel to the UK is the usual colonial smoke and mirrors. The person responsible for the atrocities and who works for the UK, US and Israel is @SuluhuSamia. https://t.co/2eo7EBJK5j
— Dr. Miguna Miguna (@MigunaMiguna) May 22, 2026
Yet beneath Miguna’s outrage lies an even darker picture of Tanzania after the October 2025 polls.
Samia claimed a staggering 98 per cent victory in the election as opposition figures vanished into detention cells, critics were hunted down, and demonstrations were drowned in bullets and tear gas.
In the days that followed, parts of Tanzania appeared to slide into a suffocating climate of fear.
Streets once alive with commerce fell under the shadow of armed patrols. Gunfire cracked through neighbourhoods, deep into the night.
Internet blackouts swallowed evidence as terrified families moved from hospital to hospital and from mortuary to mortuary searching for missing relatives.
Human rights groups and international observers painted scenes of civilians gunned down inside their homes, blood pooling on dusty streets, and entire communities silenced by fear.
Across East Africa, many critics now see the sanctions against Mafwele not as the climax but as the opening tremor of a growing international reckoning closing in on Samia’s government.
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