Massacre of Arabs during the Zanzibar Revolution

In January 1964, during and following the Zanzibar Revolution, Arab residents of Zanzibar were victims of targeted violence committed by the island’s majority Black African population. Arabs were mass murdered, raped, tortured and deported from the island by Black African militiamen under the Afro-Shirazi Party and Umma Party. The exact death toll is unknown, although scholarly sources estimate the number of Arabs killed to be between 13,000 and more than 20,000, around a quarter of the Arab population. It has been described by some, including a number of scholars, as an act of genocide.

Arabs had dominated the society of the island for more than two hundred years, both politically and economically. The uprising against the ethnic Arabs (and Indians) has been overlooked by the majority and the massacres remain largely undiscussed and outside the public eye in terms of official histories. The Zanzibar Revolution is publicly celebrated on its anniversary as an uprising against slavery and oppression, although slavery in Zanzibar had already been abolished almost a century before. But, the massacres are either downplayed or not discussed at all.