By Adonis Byemelwa
There are moments in a nation’s story when silence becomes unbearable — when the weight of conscience is too great to ignore. For many members of the European Parliament, May 8, 2025, was one of those moments.
As they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for the immediate release of Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, there was something deeply personal in the air — a shared memory of repression, of political silencing, of wounds not so far behind.
Across that chamber sat people whose countries once trembled under dictatorships, military juntas, or secret police. So, when they spoke for Lissu, they weren’t just citing policy; they were echoing the lessons etched into Europe’s painful history.
In Dar es Salaam, however, the response was blunt and defiant. Just hours before the EU vote, Tanzania’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ambassador Mahmoud Thabit Kombo, held firm. “We have not broken any law,” he declared, stressing that the country remained anchored in the rule of law. The arrest of Lissu, according to him, was a purely legal matter handled by independent courts. And then came the sharpest edge of his message: a warning to foreign diplomats to “strictly observe the Vienna Convention,” suggesting that uninvited appearances in local courtrooms would not be tolerated.
The message was clear — Tanzania is a sovereign nation. And on the face of it, that’s an unassailable point. Sovereignty, after all, is the cornerstone of international relations: the right of each nation to govern its affairs without interference.
It means setting your own laws, guiding your own political path, and choosing your destiny. From this vantage, Tanzania’s stance seemed not only understandable but expected. Any country would resist what it perceives as outside meddling.
But sovereignty, as the President of the Tanganyika Law Society, Boniface Mwabukusi, recently reminded the public, is no longer a shield that grants governments unlimited power behind closed borders.
The world has changed. Since the horrors of Rwanda and the Balkan wars, a new international understanding has emerged—one that recognizes a government’s duty to protect its people not just from foreign threats but from abuses within. That’s the heart of the doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P.
R2P reshapes the meaning of sovereignty itself. Under this principle, a country’s legitimacy rests not only on its independence but on its ability and willingness to prevent atrocities — genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity.
And if a state becomes the perpetrator or fails to act, the international community has a responsibility to step in. This isn’t about colonization or regime change. It’s about ensuring no government can hide behind its flag to commit harm.
History bears this out. In 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi turned on his people in Libya, the United Nations authorized military intervention to protect civilians. In 1999, NATO intervened in Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing, even without a direct UN mandate.
In 1994, the world failed to act in time to stop the Rwandan genocide — a failure that still echoes with regret and helped shape today’s consensus that non-intervention can sometimes be the greater crime.
Mwabukusi argues that the Tanzanian government’s response to the European Parliament failed to grapple with this evolution in international norms. Instead of addressing the core concerns — whether the charges against Lissu are credible, whether the judicial process has been fair — the response focused almost entirely on sovereignty and non-interference.
But legal arguments are not self-justifying. Declaring that courts are independent does not make them so in the eyes of observers, especially when the person in question is a prominent opposition leader with a long record of challenging the status quo.
What was missing, he suggests, was a real answer. Not slogans, but substance. The government could have laid out the charges in detail. It could have invited international observers to watch the proceedings.
It could have said, with confidence and openness, “We have nothing to hide.” Instead, it warned others to keep out. That defensiveness, for many, raised more doubts than it resolved.
There was also an eerie silence around another part of the EU’s resolution: the issue of LGBTQ+ rights. Tanzania still criminalizes same-sex relationships, and the law is unambiguous.
A candid response could have acknowledged this, explained the cultural context, perhaps even opened a conversation about the tension between national law and international norms.
Nonetheless, again, the government sidestepped the matter. Mwabukusi calls this a missed opportunity — not to justify the law, necessarily, but to show the world that Tanzania is capable of honest dialogue, even on uncomfortable topics.
For European lawmakers, these silences and evasions cut deep. Many of them come from countries that once feared to speak, where opposition leaders vanished, where courts served power, not justice.
The solidarity they now show to figures like Tundu Lissu isn’t merely diplomatic. It’s personal. They remember what repression looks like — and they know how easy it is to dress it up in legality.
They also understand that democracy is not just about elections. It’s about how one treats critics. It’s about whether the law serves the people or the powerful. And it’s about whether dissent is met with debate—or with handcuffs.
Tanzania is not at war. It’s not under siege. But in the case of Tundu Lissu, the question is not whether the state has the right to arrest someone. It’s whether it is using that right in good faith. That’s why the European Parliament acted — not to challenge Tanzania’s independence, but to hold it to its own highest standards.
The irony is that both sides want the same thing: respect. Europe wants to see a partner that values human dignity and democratic norms. Tanzania wants to be seen as a nation with the maturity to govern itself. These aren’t mutually exclusive goals. They should go hand in hand.
Boniface Mwabukusi believes that this moment, as tense as it feels, is also an opportunity. Tanzania can meet criticism not with defensiveness, but with clarity and conviction. It can say, “We are sovereign, and we are accountable.” It can defend its legal system by showing its fairness in practice, not just in principle.
The world isn’t asking Tanzania to be perfect. But it is watching to see whether it will be brave enough to live by the values it so often declares. In the end, true sovereignty isn’t just the power to say no. It’s the wisdom to say yes when justice demands it. And that, more than any resolution or press release, is what will define Tanzania’s place in the world — and in the hearts of its people.
