Tundu Lissu in Court
Tomorrow, Friday, human rights lawyer Tundu Lissu, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, leader of the opposition to a soulless dictator, will be sentenced for treason.
He faces the death penalty.
One year ago, April 3, 2025, Lissu, leader of the opposition Chadema Party, called for a boycott of the phony election that the African potentate Samia Suluhu Hassan had set. For that — a tweet on social media —Lissu was arrested, charged with treason and has remained in prison since.
Technically, he has yet to be convicted. The foregone “verdict” will be announced with the sentence.
After the faux election, an angry public took to the street. The government went on a killing spree, admitting to gunning down 197 protesters including 21 children. More believable is the opposition estimate of thousands murdered. No one in the West bothered to count, no newspaper in the US even bothered to report the massacre.
African reporters have risked death to cover the story. Ugandan journalist Agather Atuhaire who came to Tanzania to observe Lissu’s trial was sexually assaulted then dumped at the border. Other journalists and Chadema Party activists have simply been disappeared according to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Lissu exposed the killings at George Bush Sr’s gold mine.
In November 2000, I wrote an investigative story for The Guardian on a group of self-dealing politicians called the Bush Family. The article, titled The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, exposed how Daddy Bush, as he left office, gave away a multi-billion dollar gold mining property owned by the US government to Barrick Gold, a Canadian Gold miner. Bush Sr. walked out the White, then became a very highly paid “consultant” to Barrick. Bush got the gold mine, America got the shaft.
Among his other acts of value for Barrick, Bush Sr., the former head of the CIA, used his connections to help Barrick buy gold mines, including one of the world’s most lucrative gold strikes in Bulyanhulu, Tanzania.
Problem for Barrick: they could not take control of the gold field because “jewelry” miners had legal rights to small mines on the property, digging out little nuggets in shovel-dug mineshafts some 30 to 50 feet deep.
To clear the property for Barrick, the government ran bulldozers over the field to shut in the jewelry mines. However, some 50 miners were still in their mines, now buried alive.
I got the story from Amnesty International, an organization originally founded by The Guardian’s Sunday paper, The Observer.
But then, Bush Sr’s corporation, Barrick, sued me and The Guardian for millions of pounds. The Guardian panicked and pressured me to withdraw the story. Britain has no First Amendment to protect journalists and The Guardianhad no insurance. Bush & Co could put The Guardian out of business.
But then, an inestimably courageous environmental attorney, Tundu Lissu of the Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT), sent me the horrific photos of bodies being pulled from the mine shafts [I’m including one here because you must not be spared] and sworn depositions of survivors and eyewitnesses.
For giving Greg Palast that evidence, for releasing the truth, in 2001, Lissu was charged with sedition by Tanzania’s government. This was two decades ago. Once again, he could hang. So, I gave my own newspaper an ultimatum: if The Guardian retracted my story, then I myself would sue the paper for defaming me as a journalist.
I would not, could not, deny the facts of a mass killing. And most important, I could not leave Lissu to hang. I was about to be fired (again) but for a journalist named John Pilger who stormed into the office of Roger Alton, my editor. Pilger quoted John Lewis, “Palast is trouble, but he’s GOOD trouble.”
Barrick dropped the suit against me and The Guardian after I ignored the paper’s advice and screamed bloody murder. I thank Bianca Jagger, Friends of the Earth and Counsel of Canadians for saving my behind by holding simultaneous press conferences held in Washington, Toronto, London, Amsterdam and Dar Es Salaam denouncing the killings and the attacks on me, The Guardian and Canadian writers who picked up the story.
Lissu’s law office in Dar Es Salaam was smashed and his law partner beaten. Lissu was safe in the USA. But then he stunned me by telling me he would return to Tanzania. Like me, he’d just had twins. Why would he return to spend his life in prison — or worse?
There is a level of courage we see in so few – Mandela, Navalny, Lissu — gambling their lives for freedom for others — and too often losing. It is simply beyond my understanding.
But now, as then, I won’t be silent. As Amnesty International says, “Silence is complicity.”
Note: Amnesty International, the original source of my report, ran for cover, afraid of Barrick, denying they’d given me the story, removed all mention of the killings from their website and were prepared, literally, to silently watch Lissu hang. I confronted Irene Khan, then the moral-free Secretary General of Amnesty, at her expensive hotel digs in New York. Irene, chowing down in a posh restaurant, indignantly defended cuddling up to the killers.
Bush’s company is good at buying protection: Faced with charges of murdering Africans and plundering Africa, Barrick paid the big bucks to put Vernon Jordan and Andy Young on their board of directors.
Lissu has not asked for my help. He’s only asked, through Finnigan wa Simbeye of the Forum for African of Investigative Reporters, that I send him a copy of my book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy to read in prison. I’ll send the US edition, where I tell his story, “The Truth Buried Alive,”the chapter censored out of the British and Commonwealth editions.
So what are we going to do about it?
Frankly, I feel heartsick and helpless. I don’t quite know what to do. WWTD. What Would Tundu Do? He’d raise hell, come what may.
I’m sure this letter will get me back into hot water. But that’s nothing, nothing, compared to what Lissu faces tomorrow.
So, I ask you, my reader, what are YOU going to do about it? Contact your congressman, your podcasters and priests. I don’t know who or whom. I don’t expect The Guardian to stick out its neck while its source faces the noose. Last April, Amnesty did call for Lissu’s release after his arrest, but has been silent since. If you’re a member, threaten to send them back their coffee mug.
Please, at least, pass this on. They must not hang Lissu nor lock him away for life, as we stay silent. Raise your voice. SAVE THIS GOOD MAN’S LIFE.
Lissu has been nominated for the European Union’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, previously given to Nelson Mandela and Alexei Navalny (before Putin murdered him).
Pray Lissu does not receive his reward posthumously.
By Greg Palast