East Africa is now a community of repression, not cooperation

On Wednesday, May 23, 2025, Mwabili Mwagodi, a Kenyan activist living and working in Tanzania, was abducted in the capital, Dar es Salaam, under highly suspicious circumstances. According to his own account, he was approached by unidentified security agents and taken into custody without a warrant. He was blindfolded and transported to an undisclosed location. For several days, he was held incommunicado, subjected to interrogation, and most disturbingly, kept in handcuffs both day and night, even while sleeping and using the toilet. His captors offered no official charges, no access to legal representation and no information to his family or colleagues.

Eventually, and with no legal process, Mwabili was handed over to the Kenyan authorities. Traumatised and disoriented, he later revealed that when he was handed over to Kenyan authorities, they confiscated his three mobile phones, his passport, his work permit and other personal effects. He has not been able to recover them to date. No receipts were issued, no records filed. Only silence and intimidation. No government, Kenyan or Tanzanian, has publicly taken responsibility. Yet both were complicit. This illegal cross-border rendition was not the result of rogue officers; it was a coordinated action between two states determined to punish a young man for daring to speak truth to power.

Sadly, Mwabili’s case is not unique. In May 2025, Boniface Mwangi, one of Kenya’s most prominent human rights defenders and Agather Atuhaire, a fearless journalist and activist from Uganda, were both abducted in Tanzania. They had travelled there to attend the case of Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s opposition leader. Instead, they were seized by plainclothes officers, detained for days and subjected to torture both physical and psychological. When they were finally released following a regional outcry, they bore visible signs of abuse and deep emotional trauma. To date, no accountability has been offered, and no one has been prosecuted for the crimes committed against Boniface and Agather.

Around the same time in May 2025, I landed in Tanzania together with Chief Justice Emeritus Dr Willy Mutunga and Activist Hanifa Adan to attend the same court session for opposition leader Tundu Lissu, whose tireless struggle for democracy and justice has inspired many across East Africa. Our visit was peaceful, legal and open. Yet within minutes of landing at Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam, we found ourselves being treated not as observers, but as a threat.

Tanzanian immigration authorities detained us without cause or explanation. Despite identifying ourselves and explaining the purpose of our visit, we were held in a restricted area at the airport for several hours, denied legal counsel and then forcibly deported to Kenya without being allowed to step out of the airport terminal. No formal reason was given, and no documents were served. Just silent hostility and a coordinated push-back against transparency and solidarity.

Then there’s the case of Kizza Besigye, Uganda’s opposition leader. On November 16, 2024, while temporarily in Kenya, Dr Besigye was abducted by Kenyan security officers believed to have been working in collusion with Ugandan authorities. He was unlawfully transferred across the border into Uganda, where he was immediately slapped with trumped-up treason charges. His arrest, just like Mwabili’s, violated every tenet of due process and human dignity. It was a cross-border political hit, executed with surgical precision and cynical coordination.

These incidents are not random. They are part of an emerging and disturbing pattern across East Africa - where borders are used not to protect citizens, but to facilitate the illegal persecution of activists, whistleblowers and opposition leaders. What unites these cases is the deliberate collapse of legal procedure, the use of force over law and the targeting of individuals who dare to challenge state excesses. What is unfolding before our very eyes is a regional crisis of justice. The Constitutions of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are unequivocal in their protection of basic rights and liberties. Kenya’s Constitution, under Article 49, guarantees arrested persons the right to be informed promptly of the reasons for arrest, to remain silent and to be brought before a court within 24 hours. Uganda’s Article 23 offers similar protections, and Tanzania’s Bill of Rights in Article 13 explicitly forbids arbitrary arrest and detention. Yet these laws are being flouted with impunity by the three governments.

Moreover, such actions violate the East African Community (EAC) Treaty, particularly Article 6 (d), which commits partner states to principles of good governance, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. When state agents abduct individuals in one country and render them to another without judicial oversight, they reduce the EAC to a network of repression, rather than a community of cooperation.

International law is no less clear. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which all three countries are signatories, prohibits arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, and the denial of fair trial guarantees. The UN Convention Against Torture bars the transfer of individuals to countries where they risk torture or cruel treatment - a safeguard that is blatantly ignored in these renditions. What we are witnessing is not just a breakdown of the law. It is state-sanctioned terror.

As East Africans, it behoves us to tell President William Ruto, President Samia Suluhu Hassan and President Yoweri Museveni that we see what they are doing. They may believe that coordinating repression makes them more effective. They may believe that regional silence gives them cover. However, they are mistaken. East Africans are watching, organising and remembering. The cross-border brutality will not be buried. The crimes will not be forgotten. Sooner or later, justice will come, and it will come for them.