Niksta254
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- Jul 31, 2017
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Uganda tops arms race as Kenya halves to Sh1.3bn
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 10:11
The Kenyan army. PHOTO | FILE
Kenya and Tanzania sharply cut their purchase of military weapons last year even as Uganda made a comeback to emerge the top spender on arms in East Africa.
Kenya slashed its spending by half to Sh1.3 billion ($13 million) from Sh2.8 billion a year earlier while Tanzania didn’t make purchases, according to a report released yesterday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
The report indicates that Uganda ended its lull with its last year’s arms stockpile worth Sh1.8 billion, a departure from 2016 when it made nil purchase.
DDDDDUUUHHHHH Tanzania iko chini kuliko wenzake... weakest army in East and Central Africa
Tanzania: Everyone Is Scared
In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
analysis By TZ
In an unprecedented move, leaders from all sectors of society are speaking out about growing assaults on freedoms and political violence.
On 16 February, Akwinlina Akwiline was on her way to university in Dar es Salaam. She was reportedly heading to the National Institute of Transport, where she was a student, in order to hand in a letter that would allow her to shortly begin her field work. She boarded a bus.
Akwiline, however, never made it to her destination. The 22-year-old student was killed after being hit by a bullet fired by police officers attempting to disperse an opposition rally.
The news of Akwiline's death was far from the first politically-related tragedy that Tanzanians have endured in recent months. In September 2017, for example, the senior opposition lawmaker and government critic Tundu Lissu only narrowly survived after being shot several times in Dodoma. Meanwhile, just days before Akwiline's killing, opposition official Daniel John had been found dead with machete wounds in Dar es Salaam.
In a manner unlike after those incidents, however, the death of the innocent student seemed to galvanise public opinion. A wide variety of organisations expressed their frustration at the situation in Tanzania in a rare show of outspokenness.
On 21 February, for example, 108 Tanzanian civil society organisations co-signed an open letter. In it, they mourned Akwiline's death before complaining of an "unprecedented" broader assault on the rule of law and security in Tanzania. They listed "armed attacks, atrocious killings, injuries, enforced disappearance, brutality, arrests, malicious prosecutions targeting human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists, politicians and even normal civilians".
Two days later, the European Union Charge D'Affairs issued a similar statement. It listed recent instances of violence and intimidation, and declared: "We note with concern the recent developments which threaten democratic values and the rights of Tanzanians in a country which is widely respected in the world for its stability, peacefulness and freedoms."
