Killing of Tanzanian Opposition Official Adds to Fears of Pre-Election Crackdown

The abduction and killing of an opposition official over the weekend in Tanzania has kindled fear and consternation in the East African country, with activists saying it has added to questions about the democratic credentials of the nation’s pathbreaking president as elections loom.

The official, Ali Mohamed Kibao, was a member of the secretariat of the opposition Chadema party. He went missing on Friday after armed men handcuffed him and forcibly removed him from a bus leaving the city of Dar es Salaam, according to his party. Mr. Kibao’s body was found a day later in the suburbs of the city, and party officials said an autopsy showed that he had been beaten badly and that acid had been poured on his face.

“He was absolutely destroyed. He couldn’t be recognized,” Tundu Lissu, the party’s deputy and a former presidential candidate, said in an interview hours after Mr. Kibao was buried on Monday. “It was a horrible death.”

President Samia Suluhu Hassan condemned the “terrible” killing of Mr. Kibao, who defected from the governing party over a decade ago to join Chadema.

Mr. Kibao’s death comes amid a wave of abductions and arrests of opposition party members that have rattled Tanzania as it gears up for local elections in December and a general election next year. The apparent crackdown has spurred fears that a government that came to power pledging reform was returning to the repressive tactics of its predecessors.

Ms. Hassan, Tanzania’s first female leader, had promised to break with the previous leader’s autocratic tendencies when she took office in 2021. Ms. Hassan met with Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington in 2022 and again during Ms. Harris’s visit to Tanzania last year as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to bolster democracy and women’s empowerment in Africa.