Thanks to the Internet, a forbidden book portending to detail the 1998 massacre of four Tanzanian Muslim youth by police in Dar es Salaam has now been placed on Cyberspace.
The book can be downloaded and read on what has come to be called the official Islam website - http://www.islamtz.org - and recounts the religious-related rioting that ripped through Dar es Salaam 's Mwembechai area in February 1998.
Laced with pictures of the rioting, the book takes note of allegations that police tortured and sexually humiliated Muslim women arrested in the course of the disturbances.
Its publication on the information superhighway is in direct defiance of President Benjamin Mkapa's 1 August order banning the book, titled 'Mwembechai Killings and the Political Future of Tanzania' from ever entering or circulating in the country.
The development has left officials flabbergasted in a country where Internet publishing laws are still undeveloped as the ban order continues to draw fire from sections of the Muslim community.
This is threatening. I wonder what the future is in store for this
country,
Salum Ally, a Muslim, said.
By banning the book, the government has acknowledged the atrocities
said to have been committed against Muslims,
he added.
He said the book should have been allowed to circulate and its readers, including government officials, left to judge or criticise it on the strength of what it portended to say.
It was also useless for Mkapa to have banned the book because
videotapes detailing the massacre are available in the country,
Majid Ahmad, another Muslim, said.
Other Muslims share the view that the government should have targeted at establishing the authenticity of the allegations inside the banned book rather than refusing its entry into the country.
Muslims in Tanzania have long alleged that the government was plotting an offensive against them on the basis of their religious beliefs, citing disputes such as that of Mwembechai as examples.
In a study conducted world-wide in 1999, the US state department concluded that many Muslims in Kenya and Uganda too believed they suffered the same discrimination.
The government appears to recognise that a problem exists,
the
report said of Tanzania, but chose not to take action.
An example is given of the government's decision not to take part in a public discussion of religious relations in Tanzania sponsored by the US Agency for International Development.
There is broad Muslim resentment of certain advantages that
Christian are perceived to enjoy in employment and educational
opportunities,
the report added.
According to Tanzanian law, anybody caught with copies of a banned book is liable to prosecution.
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