Foreign Correspondent looks at the dark side of one of the worlds most fashionable tourist destinations, Zanzibar.
Tens of thousands of well-heeled travellers flock to the island each year for the perfect beaches and an enticing mix of Arabic and African culture.
Most are unaware of the violence and political repression that threaten to turn it into a battleground.
We are dying, says opposition leader Ibrahim Lipumba.
Supporters of Osama bin Laden can take Zanzibar if we do not allow political processes.
Reporter Eric Campbell and crew spent a week in Zanzibar getting a first-hand view of how the brutal regime stays in power.
Constantly followed by the islands secret police, they were forced to fly out in secret to avoid having their tapes confiscated.
Campbells report shows police beating opposition activists unconscious and explores the mysterious janjaweed militia blamed for violent attacks on the governments opponents.
It also looks at hardline clerics pushing to bring Sharia law to the island and close down bars and night clubs.
Zanzibar is a key strategic port on the coast of East Africa with a large population of ethnic Arabs.
The opposition argues the brutal repression of dissent is fuelling support for al-Qaeda.
Music
CAMPBELL: Its one of the worlds hottest destinations -- an exotic archipelago where Africa meets Arabia.
But some people can only travel here with bodyguards.
Music
CAMPBELL: Ibrahim Lipumba leads Zanzibars main opposition party, the Civic United Front.
His entourage has to keep a watch out for police and militia thugs.
He brings a message the ruling party doesnt want people to hear.
IBRAHIM: The young people of Zanzibar are tired.
They dont have employment, they dont have good education. There are no health services. If you get sick, you are going to die in Zanzibar. There are no medical services in Zanzibar.
CAMPBELL: And this wily politician has a startling warning. This tourist playground could soon be a training ground for Islamic jihad.
IBRAHIM: If the Zanzibaris and people believe in democracy are sidelined, it is possible for the hardliners, for religious extremists to take over. Supporters of Osama bin Laden can have a fertile ground in Zanzibar if we do not allow the democratisation processes to continue.
Music
CAMPBELL: Its a long way from the popular image of Zanzibar as a romantic hideaway.
Music
CAMPBELL: Every year, hundreds of thousands come to soak up the sun and wander the cobble stoned streets of the medieval capital, Stone Town.
But in nearby mosques, unemployed young men hear clerics rail against corruption and repression.
Sheik Azan Khalid heads the Islamic Propagation Centre, which is calling for Sharia Law in this secular State. He believes people are nearing breaking point.
SHEIK KHALID: Time will tell, humans are humans, they make their own decisions, and theres a limit how far they can be pushed and we dont know what theyll decide to do.
Music
CAMPBELL: This is part of what people are suffering. Over the past six years, the ruling party has shot dead scores of its opponents -- and beaten, imprisoned or tortured thousands more. Once renowned for its cosmopolitan tolerance , Zanzibar now looks more like a vicious police state.
Ibrahim.
Super:Ibrahim Haruna Lipumba
National Chairman, Civic United Front
IBRAHIM: If democracy fails in Zanzibar, certainly democracy can not be able to prosper in the Arab states. So it is a very critical area. It is to the interest of the people who want really democracy to succeed in the Muslim world, that that democracy first to succeed in Zanzibar.
Amani Karume addresses rally
CAMPBELL: Like his father before him, Amani Karume is president of Zanzibar and its unchallenged strongman.
His power base is the Revolutionary Party, which controls every sector of government, police, the media and civil service. Perhaps not surprisingly, it wins every election.
KARUME: For good governance in Zanzibar, we are heroes.
CAMPBELL: Party spokesman Vuai Ali Vuai insists it wins fairly.
Super:Vuai Ali Vuai - Government spokesman
VUAI: Yeah, the election was free and fair because even the entire international communities they agreed that the election was free and fair. But even though there are some small mistakes which anyway I think even in USA maybe, or other countries else, some problems can be awkward somewhere, but the election was free and fair.
Police beatings
Music
CAMPBELL: These were some of the small mistakes -- police clubbing opposition supporters senseless, then continuing to bash them as they lay unconscious.
Music
CAMPBELL: Opposition parties have been allowed to contest the past three elections, most recently in 2005. But they claim the Revolutionary Party, also called the CCM, has rigged every vote and crushed every protest.
Naila serving food in hotel
Naila Jiddawi runs a resort hotel on the main island of Unguja. When she decided to stand for election as an opposition candidate, she says the government tried to burn the resort to the ground.
Naila.
Super:Naila Jiddawa - Hotel proprietor
NAILA: They put me in gaol, they torched this house, this hotel, they closed the hotel, the leaders were government leading this group of witch hunters coming across there with their regalias and their drums forcing their way in here.
Arabs on street
CAMPBELL: Revolutionary zealots have long targeted descendants of Arabs, like Naila Jiddawi and her family.
NAILA: When the time they came to torch this place,
Naila they were singing - these are leaders of the ruling party We will get rid of all the Arabs, all the opposition parties, we will torch them. They were singing from place to place.
Campbell in village with Naila talking to women CAMPBELL: But these days, politics have moved far beyond an Arab-African divide.
The black villagers who live beside her hotel lost faith in the Revolutionary Party long ago.
NAILA: She says, you know, the government does not have a social service to help people like her.
She says, you know, when you go to town you want to bring rice, you want to bring flour, and sugar. You cant manage it because you dont have money.
CAMPBELL: But the government has done nothing to improve the village?
NAILA : She has never been helped in any way. Nothing has come down to her.
I say these are women of real strength.
School
CAMPBELL: Children at the school have to share the few textbooks. The local health clinic has no drugs.
Almost all blame Zanzibars authoritarian government.
CAMPBELL: The government wont let you run a free school for the kids?
NAILA: No, no, not at all, because I wont conform to what they will want to sing. There wont be those party songs here. It will be education.
Man in boat with Osama flag/ Women in market with veils, street scenes
Music
CAMPBELL: This is a traditionally moderate Islamic society. But it hasnt been immune from attempts to recruit Muslims for jihad. At least one was involved in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania. Some are believed to have trained in radical mosques in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Revolutionary Party holds itself out as a bastion against extremism and terrorism.
Super:Vuai Ali Vuai - Government spokesman
VUAI: No one will have room to do as he need in this country because we have a constitution and we have the law. So the law will bite him.
Election posters
CAMPBELL: And increasingly, the government has tried to link the opposition to rising Islamism. During the election, it accused the Civic United Front of sending militants to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
IBRAHIM: Thats not true.
Ibrahim. Super:Ibrahim Haruna Lipumba - National Chairman, Civic United Front
Thats propaganda that theyve been using . This is propaganda that is being used as sometimes saying that this is a Muslim Party, because they think that if you scare the Western countries by saying this is an extremist Islamist Party, then the Western governments will acquiesce to human rights abuses and lack of political rights, that has been done by CCM.
Crowd of opposition outside HQ
CAMPBELL: While the opposition has a large number of Arab members, Ibrahim Lipumba insists the party is secular and pro-Western. He blames the government for fostering Islamism through political repression.
Ibrahim IBRAHIM: If the Civic United Front which is a liberal party, a member of the international of liberal international - is eliminated as a political alternative, the only other alternative -- and people are talking about it -- the only other alternative is to organise as Muslims, and probably look at Somalia where you have the imams of mosques who are organising the government there.
Police beatings
CAMPBELL: In 2005 the government didnt just sideline the opposition, it launched a military style attack on its headquarters to stop it disputing the election result,
IBRAHIM: This place was tear-gassed.
Tear gas canisters We collected 400 canisters of tear gas just around this particular area
Ibrahim and people were beaten up. In Pemba people were beaten up, during the registration period one person was killed in Pemba. So the situation was very tense.
CAMPBELL: It seems calm on the surface, but is there a lot of tension bubbling up?
IBRAHIM: Absolutely, absolutely, because if you continue the economic situation, is also worsening, and all these people that you see around, they dont have employment.
Tourists in Stone Town
CAMPBELL: Its impossible to know if the frustration could lead to extremist violence on the islands. Foreign tourism has so far been untouched by the political and religious tension. But there are signs the islands tolerance of Western ways may be waning.
Inside mosque
Already, some hardline clerics like Sheik Khalid have called for bars to be closed and demanded that tourists be forced to dress modestly.
SHEIK KHALID: The values of Zanzibaris have been degraded from the European influence, especially with the increase of bars.
Mercurys bar
CAMPBELL: More alarming has been the mysterious bombing of bars popular with Zanzibaris. So far, only one tourist venue has been targeted -- Mercurys -- named after Zanzibars most famous son, the gay rock star Freddie Mercury. A grenade failed to explode, and many dismissed it as a business dispute.
But the government blamed the opposition for inciting the violence. VUAI: Their statement is very harsh.
Vuai Their statement, they are trying to agitate the people to make chaos, their statement they are trying to incite the people to do something which is against the government against all of the government so something like that .
Beach outside Mercurys bar
CAMPBELL: While no one is sure about the bombings, theres no doubt that many Zanzibaris are being terrorised by a very different sort of violence -- youth gangs who attack opposition supporters and burn their homes and businesses, and that terrorism has been linked directly to the ruling party.
Photos of militia beatings
These are recent victims of a shadowy youth militia called the janjaweed. Trained in secret camps, sometimes next to police stations, they have mounted highly organised raids on opposition figures.
Said at timber mill
Mkubwa Said ran Zanzibars oldest and largest timber mill until it was burnt down by a gang of youths after the last election.
SAID: They jumped over the wall, they came in two trucks and they all jumped in here . Some had uniforms and three of them had guns.
Damage to timber mill They put the watchmen over there, told them to lie down at the gunpoint, and then
Said they went to their cars and took out gallons of petrol.
Damage to timber mill
CAMPBELL: The mob burned the trucks, equipment and timber before ransacking the office and burning all the accounts. Other local businesses known to have backed the opposition suffered similar attacks. Police have made no arrests.
Super: Mkuba SaidTimber merchant
SAID: We even asked for a report of the findings of the investigation but to date, one year later, weve not been able to get anything.
Damage to timber mill
CAMPBELL: The ruling party claims to be as baffled as the police by all these attacks.
VUAI: Maybe the people sensed they started to quarrelling and then after that may be something else has been happened.
CAMPBELL: But nothing to do with the government?
VUAI: But what I want to say about this, these incident was not, was not planned by the government, was not planned by the CCM. The government is the referee. What its doing is to ensure that peace and stability all the time is existing.
Sunset shots over water
CAMPBELL: At sunset, as fishermen head out to the sea, Zanzibar almost looks as peaceful as the government claims. But a cauldron of tension is building beneath its placid surface. It remains an extraordinary and wonderful place to visit. But for many Zanzibaris, its become a nightmare to live here.
Credits:
Reporter : Eric Campbell
Camera : David Martin
Editor: John McElhinney
Producer : Vivien Altman
Tens of thousands of well-heeled travellers flock to the island each year for the perfect beaches and an enticing mix of Arabic and African culture.
Most are unaware of the violence and political repression that threaten to turn it into a battleground.
We are dying, says opposition leader Ibrahim Lipumba.
Supporters of Osama bin Laden can take Zanzibar if we do not allow political processes.
Reporter Eric Campbell and crew spent a week in Zanzibar getting a first-hand view of how the brutal regime stays in power.
Constantly followed by the islands secret police, they were forced to fly out in secret to avoid having their tapes confiscated.
Campbells report shows police beating opposition activists unconscious and explores the mysterious janjaweed militia blamed for violent attacks on the governments opponents.
It also looks at hardline clerics pushing to bring Sharia law to the island and close down bars and night clubs.
Zanzibar is a key strategic port on the coast of East Africa with a large population of ethnic Arabs.
The opposition argues the brutal repression of dissent is fuelling support for al-Qaeda.
Music
CAMPBELL: Its one of the worlds hottest destinations -- an exotic archipelago where Africa meets Arabia.
But some people can only travel here with bodyguards.
Music
CAMPBELL: Ibrahim Lipumba leads Zanzibars main opposition party, the Civic United Front.
His entourage has to keep a watch out for police and militia thugs.
He brings a message the ruling party doesnt want people to hear.
IBRAHIM: The young people of Zanzibar are tired.
They dont have employment, they dont have good education. There are no health services. If you get sick, you are going to die in Zanzibar. There are no medical services in Zanzibar.
CAMPBELL: And this wily politician has a startling warning. This tourist playground could soon be a training ground for Islamic jihad.
IBRAHIM: If the Zanzibaris and people believe in democracy are sidelined, it is possible for the hardliners, for religious extremists to take over. Supporters of Osama bin Laden can have a fertile ground in Zanzibar if we do not allow the democratisation processes to continue.
Music
CAMPBELL: Its a long way from the popular image of Zanzibar as a romantic hideaway.
Music
CAMPBELL: Every year, hundreds of thousands come to soak up the sun and wander the cobble stoned streets of the medieval capital, Stone Town.
But in nearby mosques, unemployed young men hear clerics rail against corruption and repression.
Sheik Azan Khalid heads the Islamic Propagation Centre, which is calling for Sharia Law in this secular State. He believes people are nearing breaking point.
SHEIK KHALID: Time will tell, humans are humans, they make their own decisions, and theres a limit how far they can be pushed and we dont know what theyll decide to do.
Music
CAMPBELL: This is part of what people are suffering. Over the past six years, the ruling party has shot dead scores of its opponents -- and beaten, imprisoned or tortured thousands more. Once renowned for its cosmopolitan tolerance , Zanzibar now looks more like a vicious police state.
Ibrahim.
Super:Ibrahim Haruna Lipumba
National Chairman, Civic United Front
IBRAHIM: If democracy fails in Zanzibar, certainly democracy can not be able to prosper in the Arab states. So it is a very critical area. It is to the interest of the people who want really democracy to succeed in the Muslim world, that that democracy first to succeed in Zanzibar.
Amani Karume addresses rally
CAMPBELL: Like his father before him, Amani Karume is president of Zanzibar and its unchallenged strongman.
His power base is the Revolutionary Party, which controls every sector of government, police, the media and civil service. Perhaps not surprisingly, it wins every election.
KARUME: For good governance in Zanzibar, we are heroes.
CAMPBELL: Party spokesman Vuai Ali Vuai insists it wins fairly.
Super:Vuai Ali Vuai - Government spokesman
VUAI: Yeah, the election was free and fair because even the entire international communities they agreed that the election was free and fair. But even though there are some small mistakes which anyway I think even in USA maybe, or other countries else, some problems can be awkward somewhere, but the election was free and fair.
Police beatings
Music
CAMPBELL: These were some of the small mistakes -- police clubbing opposition supporters senseless, then continuing to bash them as they lay unconscious.
Music
CAMPBELL: Opposition parties have been allowed to contest the past three elections, most recently in 2005. But they claim the Revolutionary Party, also called the CCM, has rigged every vote and crushed every protest.
Naila serving food in hotel
Naila Jiddawi runs a resort hotel on the main island of Unguja. When she decided to stand for election as an opposition candidate, she says the government tried to burn the resort to the ground.
Naila.
Super:Naila Jiddawa - Hotel proprietor
NAILA: They put me in gaol, they torched this house, this hotel, they closed the hotel, the leaders were government leading this group of witch hunters coming across there with their regalias and their drums forcing their way in here.
Arabs on street
CAMPBELL: Revolutionary zealots have long targeted descendants of Arabs, like Naila Jiddawi and her family.
NAILA: When the time they came to torch this place,
Naila they were singing - these are leaders of the ruling party We will get rid of all the Arabs, all the opposition parties, we will torch them. They were singing from place to place.
Campbell in village with Naila talking to women CAMPBELL: But these days, politics have moved far beyond an Arab-African divide.
The black villagers who live beside her hotel lost faith in the Revolutionary Party long ago.
NAILA: She says, you know, the government does not have a social service to help people like her.
She says, you know, when you go to town you want to bring rice, you want to bring flour, and sugar. You cant manage it because you dont have money.
CAMPBELL: But the government has done nothing to improve the village?
NAILA : She has never been helped in any way. Nothing has come down to her.
I say these are women of real strength.
School
CAMPBELL: Children at the school have to share the few textbooks. The local health clinic has no drugs.
Almost all blame Zanzibars authoritarian government.
CAMPBELL: The government wont let you run a free school for the kids?
NAILA: No, no, not at all, because I wont conform to what they will want to sing. There wont be those party songs here. It will be education.
Man in boat with Osama flag/ Women in market with veils, street scenes
Music
CAMPBELL: This is a traditionally moderate Islamic society. But it hasnt been immune from attempts to recruit Muslims for jihad. At least one was involved in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Tanzania. Some are believed to have trained in radical mosques in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Revolutionary Party holds itself out as a bastion against extremism and terrorism.
Super:Vuai Ali Vuai - Government spokesman
VUAI: No one will have room to do as he need in this country because we have a constitution and we have the law. So the law will bite him.
Election posters
CAMPBELL: And increasingly, the government has tried to link the opposition to rising Islamism. During the election, it accused the Civic United Front of sending militants to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
IBRAHIM: Thats not true.
Ibrahim. Super:Ibrahim Haruna Lipumba - National Chairman, Civic United Front
Thats propaganda that theyve been using . This is propaganda that is being used as sometimes saying that this is a Muslim Party, because they think that if you scare the Western countries by saying this is an extremist Islamist Party, then the Western governments will acquiesce to human rights abuses and lack of political rights, that has been done by CCM.
Crowd of opposition outside HQ
CAMPBELL: While the opposition has a large number of Arab members, Ibrahim Lipumba insists the party is secular and pro-Western. He blames the government for fostering Islamism through political repression.
Ibrahim IBRAHIM: If the Civic United Front which is a liberal party, a member of the international of liberal international - is eliminated as a political alternative, the only other alternative -- and people are talking about it -- the only other alternative is to organise as Muslims, and probably look at Somalia where you have the imams of mosques who are organising the government there.
Police beatings
CAMPBELL: In 2005 the government didnt just sideline the opposition, it launched a military style attack on its headquarters to stop it disputing the election result,
IBRAHIM: This place was tear-gassed.
Tear gas canisters We collected 400 canisters of tear gas just around this particular area
Ibrahim and people were beaten up. In Pemba people were beaten up, during the registration period one person was killed in Pemba. So the situation was very tense.
CAMPBELL: It seems calm on the surface, but is there a lot of tension bubbling up?
IBRAHIM: Absolutely, absolutely, because if you continue the economic situation, is also worsening, and all these people that you see around, they dont have employment.
Tourists in Stone Town
CAMPBELL: Its impossible to know if the frustration could lead to extremist violence on the islands. Foreign tourism has so far been untouched by the political and religious tension. But there are signs the islands tolerance of Western ways may be waning.
Inside mosque
Already, some hardline clerics like Sheik Khalid have called for bars to be closed and demanded that tourists be forced to dress modestly.
SHEIK KHALID: The values of Zanzibaris have been degraded from the European influence, especially with the increase of bars.
Mercurys bar
CAMPBELL: More alarming has been the mysterious bombing of bars popular with Zanzibaris. So far, only one tourist venue has been targeted -- Mercurys -- named after Zanzibars most famous son, the gay rock star Freddie Mercury. A grenade failed to explode, and many dismissed it as a business dispute.
But the government blamed the opposition for inciting the violence. VUAI: Their statement is very harsh.
Vuai Their statement, they are trying to agitate the people to make chaos, their statement they are trying to incite the people to do something which is against the government against all of the government so something like that .
Beach outside Mercurys bar
CAMPBELL: While no one is sure about the bombings, theres no doubt that many Zanzibaris are being terrorised by a very different sort of violence -- youth gangs who attack opposition supporters and burn their homes and businesses, and that terrorism has been linked directly to the ruling party.
Photos of militia beatings
These are recent victims of a shadowy youth militia called the janjaweed. Trained in secret camps, sometimes next to police stations, they have mounted highly organised raids on opposition figures.
Said at timber mill
Mkubwa Said ran Zanzibars oldest and largest timber mill until it was burnt down by a gang of youths after the last election.
SAID: They jumped over the wall, they came in two trucks and they all jumped in here . Some had uniforms and three of them had guns.
Damage to timber mill They put the watchmen over there, told them to lie down at the gunpoint, and then
Said they went to their cars and took out gallons of petrol.
Damage to timber mill
CAMPBELL: The mob burned the trucks, equipment and timber before ransacking the office and burning all the accounts. Other local businesses known to have backed the opposition suffered similar attacks. Police have made no arrests.
Super: Mkuba SaidTimber merchant
SAID: We even asked for a report of the findings of the investigation but to date, one year later, weve not been able to get anything.
Damage to timber mill
CAMPBELL: The ruling party claims to be as baffled as the police by all these attacks.
VUAI: Maybe the people sensed they started to quarrelling and then after that may be something else has been happened.
CAMPBELL: But nothing to do with the government?
VUAI: But what I want to say about this, these incident was not, was not planned by the government, was not planned by the CCM. The government is the referee. What its doing is to ensure that peace and stability all the time is existing.
Sunset shots over water
CAMPBELL: At sunset, as fishermen head out to the sea, Zanzibar almost looks as peaceful as the government claims. But a cauldron of tension is building beneath its placid surface. It remains an extraordinary and wonderful place to visit. But for many Zanzibaris, its become a nightmare to live here.
Credits:
Reporter : Eric Campbell
Camera : David Martin
Editor: John McElhinney
Producer : Vivien Altman