Tanzania has a reputation abroad as an island of stability in the often-chaotic region of East Africa. The country has been rewarded with praise and money from international donors, including the United States, which last year gave the country more than $480 million.
President Obama arrives here on Monday to a country where human rights groups and the largest opposition party say episodes of intimidation and suppression of political opponents are growing. “The international community believes there is peace in Tanzania,” said Willibrod Slaa, the secretary general of the opposition party, Chadema. “There is fear, not peace.”
Journalists have been attacked and in at least one instance killed while working. Last July, the government banned an independent weekly newspaper, Mwanahalisi, which had been reporting aggressively on Dr. Ulimboka’s kidnapping, linking the crime to the government. President Jakaya Kikwete denied any connection.
“I don’t feel secure,” said Saed Kubenea, managing editor at Hali Halisi Publishers Ltd., which owns Mwanahalisi. “But I will fight.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization based in New York, urged Mr. Obama last week to raise the issue of freedom of the press when he meets with Mr. Kikwete on Monday.
The political violence reached a new, unexpected level last month, when a hand grenade was thrown at a rally organized by Chadema in the northern city of Arusha, killing four people. No suspect has been identified, and the investigation is continuing.
At the party offices here in Dar es Salaam the other day, a fleet of motorcycles used for reaching isolated constituencies in villages accessible only by dirt road sat parked out back. Party officials placed a silver laptop on a table and showed a video from the rally in Arusha.
In the footage, party leaders gave speeches from atop a truck with built-in speakers. Afterward, they descended into the crowd and began collecting donations. A blast sent people scattering. A handful of wounded and dead were frantically gathered and carried to the bed of a pickup truck that took them to receive medical treatment, leaving behind a blacktop slick with blood.
“It is intimidation,” Mr. Slaa said. “The people will be afraid to go to the polling stations, and the active ones will have been eliminated.”
Chadema officials have publicly claimed that the man responsible was either working with, or protected by, the police. They say the party will produce videotape proving their charge, but only after an independent commission has been named to investigate.
Paul A. M. Chagonja, commissioner of police for operations, called the allegations “frivolous” and “unfounded,” and said the party was obligated to furnish law enforcement with any evidence in its possession. “The core function of the police is to protect the people,” Mr. Chagonja said. “We are not allied with any political party.”
Tanzania, home to Mount Kilimanjaro, is a popular tourist destination for safaris in the Serengeti. The nation has been lauded for its ethnic cohesion, rising above the kind of tribal violence that rocked Kenya after that country’s elections in 2007. Although a church bombing in May, also in Arusha, raised concerns that religious tensions could rise, Tanzania is relatively free of sectarian strife. That is one reason Mr. Obama scheduled a visit here.