President Samia Suluhu Hassan is expected to win the election as the two main opposition parties have been barred from taking part.
Polls have opened in Tanzania for presidential and parliamentary elections being held without the leading opposition party, as the government has been violently cracking down on dissent ahead of the vote.
More than 37 million registered voters will cast their ballots from 7am local time (4:00 GMT) until 4pm (13:00 GMT). The election commission says it will announce the results within three days of election day.
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President Samia Suluhu Hassan, 65, is expected to win after candidates from the two leading opposition parties were barred from standing.
The leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chadema’s Tundu Lissu, is on trial for treason, charges he denies. The electoral commission disqualified Chadema in April after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct.
The commission also disqualified Luhaga Mpina, the candidate for the second largest opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, after an objection from the attorney general, leaving only candidates from minor parties taking on Hassan.
In addition to the presidential election, voters will choose members of the country’s 400-seat parliament and a president and politicians in the semiautonomous Zanzibar archipelago.
Hassan’s governing party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), whose predecessor party led the struggle for independence for mainland Tanzania in the 1950s, has dominated national politics since its founding in 1977.
Hassan, one of just two female heads of state in Africa, won plaudits after coming to power in 2021 for easing repression of political opponents and censorship that proliferated under her predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in office.
But in the last two years, rights campaigners and opposition candidates have accused the government of unexplained abductions of its critics.
She maintains her government is committed to respecting human rights and last year ordered an investigation into the reports of abductions. No official findings have been made public.
Pupils walk past a billboard for Tanzanian presidential candidate Samia Suluhu Hassan, of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, in Arusha, Tanzania, on October 8, 2025 [AP]
Stifling opposition
UN human rights experts have called on Hassan’s government to immediately stop the enforced disappearance of political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists “as a tool of repression in the electoral context”.
They said more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance had been recorded in Tanzania since 2019.
A recent Amnesty International report detailed a “wave of terror” including “enforced disappearance and torture … and extrajudicial killings of opposition figures and activists”.
Human Rights Watch said “the authorities have suppressed the political opposition and critics of the ruling party, stifled the media, and failed to ensure the electoral commission’s independence”.
US crisis-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) said the ruling CCM was intent on maintaining its status as the “last hegemonic liberation party in southern Africa” and avoiding the recent electoral pressures faced by counterparts in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
In September 2024, the body of Ali Mohamed Kibao, a member of the secretariat of the opposition Chadema party, was found after two armed men forced him off a bus heading from Dar-es-Salaam to the northeastern port city of Tanga.
There are fears that even members of CCM are being targeted. Humphrey Polepole, a former CCM spokesman and ambassador to Cuba, went missing from his home this month after resigning and criticising Hassan. His family found blood stains in his home.
The Tanganyika Law Society says it has confirmed 83 abductions since Hassan came to power, with another 20 reported in recent weeks.
Protests are rare in Tanzania, in part thanks to a relatively healthy economy, which grew by 5.5 percent last year, according to the World Bank, on the back of strong agriculture, tourism and mining sectors.
Hassan has promised big infrastructure projects and universal health insurance in a bid to win over voters.
Safety advisers in Birmingham City and UK police said Israeli team fans should not attend match due to ‘risks to public safety’.
Fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv have been barred from attending a Europa League game against Aston Villa in the United Kingdom next month because of security concerns, the English club said.
Birmingham City’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) – the body responsible for issuing safety certificates for matches at Villa Park, where the game is to be played – informed Aston Villa that Maccabi Tel Aviv away fans will not be permitted to attend.
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Aston Villa confirmed in a statement on Thursday that the “club has been informed that no away fans may attend the UEFA Europa League match with Maccabi Tel Aviv on Thursday, November 6, following an instruction from the Safety Advisory Group”.
“Police have advised the SAG that they have public safety concerns outside the stadium bowl and the ability to deal with any potential protests on the night,” the club said.
Aston Villa can confirm the club has been informed that no away fans may attend the UEFA Europa League match with Maccabi Tel Aviv.
West Midlands Police said they had classified the match as high risk based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.
“Based on our professional judgement, we believe this measure will help mitigate risks to public safety,” the police force said.
Last year’s clashes in Amsterdam between pro-Palestinian supporters and Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv led to dozens of arrests and five people imprisoned.
WMP supports Safety Advisory Group decision regarding Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel-Aviv football match.
While accusations of anti-Semitic attacks quickly circulated following the clashes in Amsterdam on November 6 and 7, reports soon emerged of Israeli fans provoking the violence and of rampaging through the Dutch capital, assaulting residents, destroying symbols of Palestinian solidarity and chanting racist and genocidal slogans against Palestinians and Arabs.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, and the London-based Jewish Leadership Council have all criticised the ban.
Starmer said in a post on social media that the ban was “the wrong decision”.
“The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation,” he said.
This is the wrong decision.
We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets.
The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.https://t.co/8aBeqE4qbA
The Jewish Leadership Council said it was “perverse that away fans should be banned from a football match because West Midlands Police can’t guarantee their safety”.
“Aston Villa should face the consequences of this decision and the match should be played behind closed doors,” the organisation added in a statement.
The move to ban away fans from the fixture in Birmingham comes amid growing calls to ban Israeli football teams from international competition over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“We collected and verified extensive evidence of this systematic instrumentalisation of football culture in genocide,” Ashish Prashar, a campaign director at Game Over Israel, which has been pushing to ban Israel from FIFA and UEFA, told Al Jazeera. “This report integrates findings – from stadium racism, to assaults in Europe, to soldiers turning genocide into football propaganda – and demonstrates why Israel’s place in global sport is indefensible.”
More than 30 legal experts wrote earlier this month to UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, saying that banning Israel from competitions was “imperative”, citing a report by United Nations investigators that confirmed Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.
The signatories highlighted the damage that Israel is inflicting on the sport and athletes in Gaza.
“These acts have decimated an entire generation of athletes, eroding the fabric of Palestinian sport,” the experts said.
“The failure of the Israel Football Association (IFA) to challenge these violations implicates it in this system of oppression, rendering its participation in UEFA competitions untenable,” they said.
“UEFA must not be complicit in sports-washing such flagrant breaches of international law, including but not limited to the act of genocide,” they added.
Barred from Eurovision, Russia held its own rival song contest called ‘Intervision’ featuring singers from 23 countries. Moscow presented the event as a showcase of ‘family values’, while Ukraine condemned it as ‘hostile propaganda’.
Lawyers seeking a temporary restraining order against an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades say that “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been barred from meeting attorneys, are being held without any charges and that a federal immigration court has canceled bond hearings.
A virtual hearing in federal court in Miami was being held Monday on a lawsuit that was filed July 16. A new motion on the case was filed Friday.
Lawyers who have shown up for bond hearings for “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been told that the immigration court doesn’t have jurisdiction over their clients, the attorneys wrote in court papers. The immigration attorneys demanded that federal and state officials identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over the detainees and start accepting petitions for bond, claiming the detainees constitutional rights to due process are being violated.
“This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” the immigration attorneys wrote. “This is an unprecedented and disturbing situation.”
The lawsuit is the second one challenging “Alligator Alcatraz.” Environmental groups last month sued federal and state officials asking that the project built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
US State Department says the employee was slapped with an exit ban while visiting the country in a ‘personal capacity’.
A United States government employee has been prevented from leaving China after visiting the country for personal reasons, Washington has said.
The employee of the US Patent and Trademark Office, an agency within the US Department of Commerce, was subject to an “exit ban” while travelling in China in a “personal capacity”, the US Department of State said on Monday.
“The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
“We are tracking this case very closely and are engaged with Chinese officials to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”
The statement comes after The Washington Post on Sunday reported that a Chinese-American man employed by the US Commerce Department was barred from leaving China after failing to disclose his work for the government on a visa application.
The report, which cited four unnamed people familiar with the matter, said the employee had travelled to China several months ago to visit family.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on Sunday reported that the man, a naturalised US citizen, was detained in Chengdu, Sichuan, in April over “actions Beijing deemed harmful to national security”.
The Post’s report cited an unnamed “source familiar with the matter”.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, referred Al Jazeera to remarks by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun, who on Monday told journalists he had “no details to share” on the case.
“China upholds the rule of law and handles entry and exit affairs in accordance with the law,” Guo said at a regular media briefing.
Washington’s confirmation of the exit ban comes after Beijing on Monday said it had blocked the departure of a US citizen employed by the banking giant Wells Fargo.
China’s Foreign Ministry said that Chenyue Mao, an Atlanta-based managing director, was subject to an exit ban due to her involvement in an unspecified criminal case.
Washington and Beijing have long traded accusations of espionage and meddling in each other’s domestic affairs.
On Monday, the US Department of Justice said that a Chinese-born US researcher had pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets, including blueprints for infrared sensors designed to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic missiles.
Prosecutors said Chenguang Gong, a dual US-Chinese citizen, transferred more than 3,600 company files to his personal storage devices during his employment with a Los Angeles-based research and development firm.
Before taking up work with the company, Gong had travelled to China several times to seek funding to develop technology with military applications, prosecutors said.
Hollywood’s relationship with artificial intelligence is fraught, as studios balance the need to cut costs with growing concerns from actors, directors and crew members. But in China, efforts to use AI in entertainment are taking a more no-holds-barred approach.
The China Film Foundation, a nonprofit fund under the Chinese government, plans to use AI to revitalize 100 kung fu classics including “Police Story,” “Once Upon a Time in China” and “Fist of Fury,” featuring Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee, respectively. The foundation said it will partner with businesses including Shanghai Canxing Culture & Media Co., which will license 100 Hong Kong films to AI companies to reintroduce those movies to younger audiences globally.
Chow Yun-fat stars in director John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986.
(Cinema City)
The foundation said there are opportunities to use AI to tell those stories through animation, for example. There are plans to release an animated version of director John Woo’s 1986 film “A Better Tomorrow” that uses AI to “reinterpret” Woo’s “signature visual language,” according to an English transcript of the announcement.
“By empowering cultural storytelling with technology, we can breathe new life into the classics and tell China’s stories farther and louder,” said Zhang Pimin, chairman of the China Film Foundation, at the Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this month.
The project raised eyebrows among U.S. artists, many of whom are deeply wary of the use of AI in creative pursuits.
The Directors Guild of America said AI is a creative tool that should only be used to enhance the creative storytelling process and “it should never be used retroactively to distort or destroy a filmmaker’s artistic work.”
“The DGA strongly opposes the use of AI or any other technology to mutilate a film or to alter a director’s vision,” the DGA said in a statement. “The Guild has a longstanding history of opposing such alterations on issues like colorization or sanitization of films to eliminate so-called ‘objectionable content’, or other changes that fundamentally alter a film’s original style, meaning, and substance.”
The project highlights widely divergent views on AI’s potential to reshape entertainment as the two countries compete for dominance in the highly competitive AI space. In the U.S., much of the traditional entertainment industry has taken a tepid view of generative AI, due to concerns over protecting intellectual property and labor relations.
While some Hollywood studios such as Lionsgate and Blumhouse have collaborated with AI companies, others have been reluctant to announce partnerships at the risk of offending talent that have voiced concerns over how AI could be used to alter their digital likeness without adequate compensation.
But other countries like China have fewer guardrails, which has led to more experimentation of the technology by entertainment companies.
Many people in China embrace AI, with 83% feeling confident that AI systems are designed to act in the best interest of society, much higher than the U.S. where it’s 37%, according to a survey from the United Nations Development Program.
The foundation’s announcement came as a surprise to Bruce Lee Enterprises, which oversees legal usage of Lee’s likeness in creative works.
Bruce Lee’s family was “previously unaware of this development and is currently gathering information,” a spokesperson said.
Woo, in a written statement, said he hadn’t heard from the foundation about the AI remake, noting that the rights to “A Better Tomorrow” have changed hands several times.
“I wasn’t really involved in the project because I’m not very familiar with AI technology,” Woo said in a statement to The Times. “However, I’m very curious about the outcome and the effect it might have on my original film.”
David Chi, who represents the China Film Foundation’s Special Fund for Film and Urban Development, said in an interview that Chan is aware of the project and he has plans to talk with Chan’s team. A representative of Chan’s did not respond to a request for comment.
“We do need to talk … very specifically how we‘re using animated or AI existing technology, and how that would combine with his image rights and business rights,” Chi said. Chi did not have an immediate response to the DGA, Bruce Lee Enterprises and Woo’s statements.
AI is already used in China for script development, content moderation and recommendations and translation. In postproduction, AI has reduced the time to complete visual effects work from days to hours, said He Tao, an official with the National Radio and Television Administration’s research center, during remarks at the festival.
“Across government agencies, content platforms, and production institutions, the enthusiasm to adopt and integrate AI has never been stronger,” He said.
During the project’s announcement, supporters touted the opportunity AI will bring to China to further its cultural message globally and generate new work for creatives. At the same time, they touted AI’s disruption of the filmmaking process, saying the “A Better Tomorrow” remake was completed with just 30 people, significantly fewer than a typical animated project.
China is a “more brutal society in that sense,” said Eric Harwit, professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “If somebody loses their job because artificial intelligence is taking over, well, that’s just the cost of China’s moving forward. They don’t have that kind of regret about people losing jobs and there are less opportunities for organized protest against the Chinese government.”
A scene from the movie “Once Upon A Time In China.”
(Golden Harvest)
Hollywood guilds such as SAG-AFTRA have been outspoken about the harm AI could have on jobs and have fought for protections against AI in contracts in TV shows, films and video games. The unions have also pushed state and federal legislators to create laws that would give people more protections against deep fakes, or videos manipulated to show a person endorsing an idea or product that they don’t actually support. There is no equivalent of that in China.
“You don’t have those freestanding labor organizations, so they don’t have that kind of clout to protest against the Chinese using artificial intelligence in a way that might reduce their job opportunities or lead to layoffs in the sector,” Harwit added.
U.S. studios are also going to court to challenge the ways AI companies train their models on copyrighted materials. Earlier this month, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures sued AI startup Midjourney, alleging it uses technology to generate images that copy the studios’ famous characters, including Yoda and Shrek.
In China, officials involved in the project to remaster kung fu films said they were eager to work with AI companies. They said that AI will be used to add “stunning realism” to the movies. They are planning to build “immersive viewing experiences” such as walking into a bamboo forest duel and “feeling the philosophy of movement and stillness.” In areas such as animation, new environments could be created with AI, Chi said.
“We are offering full access to our IP, platform, and adaptation rights to partners worldwide — with the goal of delivering richer, more diverse, and high-quality AI enhanced film works to global audiences,” said Tian Ming, chairman of Shanghai Canxing Culture & Media Co. in his remarks earlier this month. Tian said there is no revenue-sharing cap and it is allocating about $14 million to co-invest in selected projects and share in the returns.
The kung fu revitalization efforts will extend into other areas, including the creation of a martial arts video game.
Industry observers said China is wise to go back to its well of popular martial arts classics out of Hong Kong, which have inspired U.S. action movies for decades.
There’s also not as much risk involved for China, said Simon Pulman, a partner at law firm Pryor Cashman.
“They’ve got very little to lose by doing this,” Pulman said. “If it can potentially enhance the value of those movies, there’s very little downside for them.”
China’s film industry has grown significantly compared to decades ago, boosted by the proliferation of movie theaters, including Imax screens, in the country.
In the past, China’s box office relied heavily on U.S. productions like movies from the “Fast & Furious” and Marvel franchises, but now local movies dominate the market. The Chinese animated movie “Ne Zha 2” grossed $2.2 billion at the box office globally.
But those Chinese productions generally don’t draw large U.S. audiences when they’re released in the States. The classic martial arts movies, however, have a global following and enduring legacy.
“People love martial arts movies, because action travels,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “It doesn’t matter what language it’s in, if you have a great action sequence and great fighting sequences.”
