The Police in the special Dar-es-salaam zone have teargassed hundreds of Christian brethren who had gathered outside their church building for their usual Sunday mass.
Members of the ‘Kanisa la Ufufuo na Uzima,’ (Church of resurrection and Life), were compelled to conduct prayers in the open after the government closed their church premises about two weeks earlier.
The denomination with thousand followers is led by the estranged Bishop Josephat Gwajima who recently irked the Tanzanian Government officials after he started speaking against the ongoing series of abductions, killings and enforced disappearances in the country.
Gwajima wanted the government to take action against the incidents that were tarnishing the image of the previously peaceful East African Nation.
However, his advice was not only overruled but, the state machinery went round to evict church members from their worship house and also closed all branches of the denominations around the country.
Advocate Peter Madekela who was hired by the ‘Kanisa la Ufufuo na Uzima,’ to lodge a legal appeal against the move, recently reported that there was no official evidence of the church closure as the letter dispatched to the elders seemed dubious.
But despite the announcement, the police continued to throng the perimeters of the church building at Ubungo in Dar-es-salaam, preventing members from entering the worship house for their usual mass.
That caused hundreds of Dar-es-salaam residents who worship at the church to stage outdoor sermons which had to be dispersed by the police firing tear gas canons onto the crowd.
Apart from being a church leader, Bishop Josephat Gwajima is also a Member of Parliament for the Kawe constituency in the city of of Dar-es-salaam under the ruling CCM party, which according to observers, may not allow him to run for the seat again this year.