Tanzania still retains the death penalty as one of punishments under...

Tanzania still retains the death penalty as one of punishments under the Penal Code and the National Defense Act. There are three offences punishable by the death sentence: murder, treason and misconduct of commanders or any military service man in the presence of an enemy.
In April 2002 President Benjamin Mkapa pardoned 100 people sentenced to death by commuting the penalties to life imprisonment. The gesture was officially described as a way for the President to '”show his concern for human rights, especially the right to life,” Home Affairs Minister Mohammed Seif Khatib said on announcing the commutations.
The President, in 2009, commuted the death sentences of 75 condemned prisoners. According to the Legal and Human Rights Center (LHRC), this commutation was a consequence of a strategic case against mandatory death penalty filed in 2008 that went on and of the media campaign as well.
Hon. Celina O. Kombani, Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs of Tanzania at the regional conference on the abolition or moratorium on execution of the death penalty, held in Kigali, from 13th-14th October, 2011 and organized by Hands off Cain in partnership with the Government of Rwanda, said:
“The Right to Life is well enshrined in the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania of 1977…but Tanzania has in her statutes books death penalty as a punishment for capital offences of murder and treason.
In Tanzania death penalty is only passed by the High Court. Free legal aid service is provided to accused persons facing charges that attract death penalty to ensure that in the process of trial the accused is legally represented. A person sentenced to death by the High Court has an automatic right of appeal to the Court of Appeal which is the highest Court in Tanzania. Once a death sentence is passed and confirmed by the Court of Appeal there is an Advisory Committee on the prerogative of mercy which advises the President on the propriate of carrying out the sentence. In advising the President, the Committee considers the views of relatives of both the victim and convict, including the convict’s own submission to the Committee. In addition to the Committee, the President also directs the sentencing Court to submit to him a written report on the case. These mechanisms, to a larger extent, provide a safeguard against arbitrary execution of the death penalty. The de facto moratorium is exercised under the President’s prerogative.
A Special Committee was formed by the Government for the purposes of collecting opinion from the public on whether or not death penalty should be abolished. The Committee realized that majority of Tanzanians are for the retention of the death penalty.
Since the public opinion on the death penalty is divided, the Government commissioned the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania to carry out research on the death penalty and come up with appropriate recommendations. The Commission has already submitted its report (in 2009 and suggested its abolition NDR) and the Government is working on it.
Tanzania is now embarking on a Constitutional Review process. Bearing in mind that the Right to Life is enshrined in the Constitution, there is likelihood that during the Constitutional Review process, the public may have the opportunity of expressing their opinion on the death penalty.”
At the same conference, the Tanzanian Attorney General Hon. Fredrick Werema made a statement during the debate on death penalty versus public opinion saying: “Death penalty is a barbaric punishment, introduced by barbaric colonialists, for barbaric offences.”
In 2011, the UN Human Rights Committee noted the de facto moratorium on the death penalty in place since 1994, while expressing concern about the large number of individuals on death row and that courts continued to impose large numbers of death sentences. The Committee regretted the “lack of sufficient information on the length of time that convicted persons have spent on death row, their treatment in detention, and the procedures in place for the commutation of death sentences in light of the moratorium.” The Committee recommended that Tanzania commute all death sentences, consider abolition, becoming a party to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, and that Tanzania assure that prisoners do not face maltreatment. Hon. Mathias Chikawe, who represented Tanzania in Geneva, was openly quoted in the Tanzania 2011 Universal Periodic Review report as follows: “Research shows that public opinion is still divided on the appropriateness of the death penalty as majority of the people are retentionists.....Tanzania has not acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”.
However, the LHRC managed to collect professional and guided public opinion (1,500 people were interviewed) on the death penalty from different parts of the country. The study shows that that 76% of the people interviewed admitted that death penalty is not a good punishment while as 74% of the same group of people recommend life imprisonment as the best alternative to death penalty. The LHRC advises the State to go back to the public and use open approaches to get public opinion on death penalty.
Records collected by LHRC show that since independence in 1961, there have been 238 (232 men and 6 women) who were executed after being convicted of murder. The last execution was carried out in 1994 whereby 21 men were hanged.
The number of executions between 1961 and 1995 amounted to 9.3 per cent of death row prisoners who were hanged.
The statistical information suggests that despite the executions that were done between 1961 and 1995, incidents of offences punishable by the death penalty were increasing and are still on the rise, from 46 convicts in 1961 to 2,562 in 2007. LHRC, basing on these statistics, said that the death penalty is ineffective to curb capital crimes.
On December 20, 2012, Tanzania abstained on the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.