'Your silence is complicit,' Karua slams global bodies over EAC abductions

People’s Liberation Party (PLP) leader Martha Karua,at Karen Hospital after visiting Juja MP George Koimburi who is admitted after he was allegedly abducted and tortured. [Collins Oduor, Standard]

People's Liberation Party (PLP) leader Martha Karua has called on the international community to launch investigations into the ongoing abductions in East African Community (EAC) member states.

Karua on Tuesday questioned the prolonged silence of international bodies amid the surge in abductions.

“We call on Jumuiya to launch urgent inquiries into cross-border abductions. The African Union, through the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and the UN Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya,” she said.

“To the international community: your silence is complicity. The world must demand an immediate halt to political repression in East Africa, the release of all political prisoners, accountability for state-sponsored torture and abductions, and free and fair elections where the people's choices are respected”.

 The PLP leader has also called on the European Union and all democratic allies to impose targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for enforced disappearances, torture, and suppression of civic space.

She has urged all East African citizens to break the silence by uniting in civic solidarity across borders.

“We are staring at a regional crisis, not of economics, not of trade, but of democracy itself. The ideals upon which EAC was founded, cooperation, freedom of movement, and the protection of human rights are being systematically dismantled by member states acting with impunity,” she noted.

She further expressed disappointment at how EAC leaders speak of unity at international forums while supporting arrests, abductions and torture of their citizens.

Karua raised concern regarding the latest wave of abductions and forced disappearances within EAC countries. Activists  Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire were abducted and tortured in neighbouring Tanzania a fortnight ago. 

In Tanzania, the main opposition party, CHADEMA has been disqualified from participating in elections as its leader, Tundu Lissu,  faces treason charges.

 “The growing number of cross-border crackdowns suggests a coordinated strategy among the regimes of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania to criminalise dissent through arbitrary arrests, detention and torture in order to inculcate a culture of fear,” said Karua.