Tanzania MEDIA REGULATION Media Services Bill clamps down on the media Although it has not been passed, the Media Services aims to restrict the independence and freedom of the media in Tanzania by way of, among other things, establishing a statutory media council (referred to as the “Media Services Council”), requiring journalists and media houses to obtain an official licence, affirming the government-controlled ‘public broadcaster’ as the state broadcaster, introducing severe sanctions for a number of media-specific offences and allowing for the banning of newspapers as well as the import of publications. The Media Services Council will oversee all publishers, from major news outlets to bloggers’ sites and prohibit any nonaccredited journalists from publishing. Contained within the Bill are valid clauses instructing media owners to provide their workers with contracts and insurance, but these legitimate sections are heavily outweighed by the punitive measures against the media. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ONLINE Fears over the negative impact of the Cybercrime Act became a reality prior to the General Election in October 2015. Government announced the enforcement of the Cybercrimes Act in September 2015, and a month later the police raided the tallying centre of an opposition party and arrested 8 members of staff, claiming the group had published inaccurate data on Facebook, Twitter, and the internal election management system, according to reports. nia Civil Society Consortium on Election Observation, a civil society group that monitored the elections confiscating laptops and detaining staff. The police accused staff of collecting and sharing election results, despite the consortium having permission from the National Election Commission to observe and monitor election campaigns across the country. Maxence Melo, founder of Jamii Forums, Tanzania’s extremely popular Swahililanguage online social media platform has been under severe pressure since the enforcement of the Cybercrimes Act. Melo been summoned by the Police several times, under this new law and it is all related to content posted on the JamiiForums.com platform. The miminum amount of time he has spent in police custody is 2 hours and 30 minutes and the longest time he has spent being questioned is 8 hours. The direct issues they raised and wanted were the real names, email and IP addresses of members who had posted content they were interested in. The website has also suffered severe attacks and almost US$10,000 has been spent rectifying the website and changing hosts. He has also suffered on a personal level – “the indirect attack was a personal one against me. They targeted my home and killed 5 of my dogs. The police inspector who visited said the attack was intended to scare more than to hurt anyone and that what I do may have been the cause,” Melo told MISA Tanzania. In late October, the police also raided the Dar es Salaam offices of the Tanza- So This is Democracy? 2015 79