Thursday, January 5, 2017
An advocate disqualifies LHRC paper over language use
In an extra ordinary tension, the former Member of
Parliament on CCM ticket has strongly challenged the language which has been
used to express the research findings of a Legal and Human Right Centre (LHRC)
saying that is not straight forward in a normal understanding of a paper presentation.
Pindi Chana who is a lawyer and advocate by profession expressed her
disappointment when contributing on a paper presented by LHRC at a breakfast
debate organized by policy forum which was held recently at British Council in
Dar es Salaam. According to Pindi, the paper by LHRC titled, “Perspective on human rights and governance
in Tanzania” was full of a language which directly accuses Tanzania
government over bad decisions it induces on issues related to human rights and
governance. Pindi clarified that the language used to express the findings as
highlighted in LHRC’s paper presentation directly attributes the government’s
failure to deal with numerous issues arising in the country which are directly
associated with human rights and good governance. However, although she praised
the paper to be good but blasted on the language used while presenting the
facts and noted that, this is a shame to the government as such facts are not
in real situation bearing the fact that the government has been in the
forefront caring for its people and the society at large and that is why peace
and tranquility has prevailed in the country for longer. The argument that
Pindi had raised queried if there was an official from the government side who
was consulted for clarification among the respondents which specifically proved
to be none. To her great dismay, she was surprised to have realized that after
going through the paper which had been presented, there was no any data
collected from the government side which could at least balance their findings
to illustrate a fair play. In the LHRC’s paper the findings stated that, there
is no Act of torture in Tanzania and that once one is tortured there are no
legal mechanism on how to deal with the perpetrators accordingly. In addition
to that, Tanzania government had been lacking data to base their argument that
the situation of human rights has improved, according to the report although
officials have been claiming that the situation of human rights in the country
is improving this is baseless. Other findings in the LHRC report have it that
the government delegates informed the member states on the positive development
about the constitutional review process. However, LHRC noted with concern that
the constitutional review process has not been as smooth as the government
tried to depict and it had since stalled the process. Another confusing
statement of a research findings whose language is wrongly implicated is where
the LHRC’s findings says that, the government informed the member states on the
Zanzibar election that was democratically conducted and all the political
parties participated while the situation on the ground was not the case. The
main opposition party in the Isles the Civic United Front (CUF) did not
participate in the so-called democratic election. With this regard LHRC’s
findings show that the government had misinformed the member states on the
Zanzibar situation. Another point she
noted is where the LHRC report findings show that, the government submitted
that there is wider provision of human rights education to the community and
that it was lying. The truth about the matter is that, the
whole work is being advocated by civil society groups which provides such
education through different outreach programs and receives no momentary
contribution from the government. “The language used by a presenter while
analyising his report findings is not fair although he might be on the right
track”, she said and added that such statements oppresses the government’s
participation towards ensuring that peace and order is highly maintained in the
country. On his part, LHRC’s Program Officer Paul Mikongoti responded to such a
query and said that, even if the language is wrongly used, but the facts remain
the same. He further said that, the government has not been cooperative with
their centre in such a manner that they show reluctance whenever his centre is
working on crucial issues for the general public and they don’t get clear
answers whenever are investigating an issue.
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