DODOMA: President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Tuesday warned foreign diplomats against “meddling” in Tanzania’s affairs, as she fights off allegations that state security agencies are responsible for the recent spate of abductions and killings of opposition leaders.
The worrying trend comes as the country prepares for local government elections in November and President Samia asserts that that her administration can – and will – handle the situation its own way.
In her first substantive comment on recent violent events that have cast a shadow over the upcoming civic polls, the president said statements of condemnation issued by several Western diplomatic missions stationed in Tanzania were not welcome and were in violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Article 41 of the convention states that diplomats “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.”
Samia said that Tanzania would not take instructions from any country on how to go about investigating the politically linked violence.
The violence reached a new zenith on September 6 in the brazen abduction and subsequent killing of a senior Chadema secretariat member Ali Mohamed Kibao in Dar es Salaam.
