Almost two months ago, immigration officials at Julius Nyerere International Airport detained Babu Owino from Kenya for a long interrogation and sent him home on the next flight, he said, as he wrote a letter to President Samia Suluhu Hassan to complain about the incident today.
The Embakasi East lawmaker, 35, said that Tanzania’s President Suluhu ought to explain to the great people of his constituency and Kenyans at large why her government detained him for three hours at Julius Nyerere International Airport.
“When she comes to Kenya, we welcome her as a friend, but when a sitting Member of Parliament goes to Tanzania, her government frustrates him,” the MP wrote on X. “This is unacceptable.”
Opening up about the unsettling experience at the airport in Dar es Salaam, the MP said it happened in December 2024. On presenting his passport, Babu Owino recounted that he was taken to a room where officers from the country’s immigration department told him he was on the list of persona non grata in Tanzania.
According to him, that was a total violation of his right to freedom of movement, in light of several cross-border movement agreements between Kenya and Tanzania, as well as universal migration rights.
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“Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantee persons the right of movement into and out of nations upon following due process, which I did.
Similarly, the East African Treaty and the East African Community Common Market (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations provide for the free movement of citizens of partner states.”
“I am a citizen of the East African Community, specifically Kenya, for that matter. I am an elected Member of the Kenyan Parliament, which is duly represented in EALA, whose seat is in Tanzania,” Babu Owino continued to state in the letter to President Suluhu.
“Therefore, I am placing this special request to your office to appraise me in writing on the reasons why I am not allowed to enter Tanzania for business, as a representative of the people of Kenya, as a friend of the people of Tanzania, or for any other legitimate reasons.”
The letter was sent directly to Tanzania’s head of state via the official National Assembly’s postal address, tagged from the Budget and Appropriation Committee, of which the MP is a member.
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