Chaos erupted in Dar-es-salaam again when armed police officers confronted various church members who were practising their usual Sunday worship in the city but allegedly doing that in open air streets.
Several worshippers were injured during the fracas and more than 50 got arrested.
It is being speculated that the church members could have been followers of the ‘Kanisa la Ufufuo na Uzima,’ church whose building is being placed under siege by police officers that have been preventing the brethren from conducting their sermons in the facility for nearly a month now.
The church is headed by Bishop Josephat Gwajima and got closed down after the leader made a public statement to condemn the incidences of enforced disappearance, arrests and killing of innocent people in Tanzania.
Gwajima who also served as Member of Parliament for the Kawe constituency of Dar-es-salaam, has just taken new forms to express desire to run for the same National Assembly seat again using the ruling party’s ticket.
But according to the Dar-es-salaam Zone’s Police Statement, the arrested Christians had just attended sermon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of East Africa (Kanisa la Kiinjili la Kilutheri Afrika Mashariki) or KKAM and upon coming out of the church they staged an ‘unlawful’ assembly along the road.
The Police statement says the incident occurred along the busy Kibo section of Ubungo area in Dar-es-salaam city, where the worshippers were trying to enter the busy road en-masse and had to be confronted by the police.
Church members were shouting ‘Yesu! Yesu! Yesu!’ meaning ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’
There have been protests among residents of Dar-es-salaam as well as other Tanzanians who expressed anger through social media against what they described to be breaching of the right to worship among Christians, saying it was an attack on religion.
On the other hand, the Police in Dar-es-salaam have admitted to arresting 52 people, mostly church members who are being held for interrogation, in connection with the incident.