Massacre of Arabs in Zanzibar: 13,000-20,000 (jan 1, 1964 – jan 1, 1964)

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The Zanzibar Massacre (also known as the Massacre of Arabs during the Zanzibar Revolution or "Africa's Forgotten Genocide") was carried out by Black African militiamen under the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) and Umma Party, led by Ugandan Christian preacher John Okello, along with recently dismissed police officers and armed insurgents against the Arab and South Asian minority populations between January 12, 1964 (revolution began) and early February 1964 (violence subsided after approximately three weeks), with an estimated death toll between 13,000-20,000 Arabs killed (representing approximately one-quarter of Zanzibar's 50,000-80,000 Arab population), plus additional South Asian victims.

Perpetrators engaged in mass murder with machetes and captured weapons, systematic rape ("thousands of women" raped by Okello's followers, with hundreds "raped to death" while others "slaughtered for resisting rape"), torture, mutilation, looting, mass graves (documented by Italian film crew in documentary Africa Addio 1967—the only visual record), Okello broadcasting on radio urging followers "to kill as many Arabs as possible, with the maximum of brutality" in "thunderous Old Testament language," house-to-house searches hunting Arabs, separate detention camps for Arab men and women, forced deportation of 100,000 Arabs and South Asians who fled primarily to Oman, and complete ethnic cleansing ending 250+ years of Arab dominance.

It has been labeled as genocide by American diplomat Donald Petterson (who wrote "Genocide was not a term that was as much in vogue then, as it came to be later, but it is fair to say that in parts of Zanzibar, the killing of Arabs was genocide, pure and simple"), scholar Heribert Adam (who devoted a chapter to Zanzibar in his book on denied genocides), Cambridge University Press publication "Africa and the Gulf Region" (Chapter 4 titled "The 1964 Zanzibar Genocide: The Politics of Denial"), numerous scholars who characterize it as genocide, and Omani collective memory which commemorates it as "invasion" or "genocide."

However, it remains one of history's most "denied genocides"—completely absent from genocide literature except for one passing reference in a 2002 reader. African nativism, Marxist class analysis, pan-Africanism, and Cold War politics created "regimes of thought" preventing genocide labeling.

No international recognition exists. Tanzania (formed April 1964 when Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika) commemorates the revolution annually as liberation, never acknowledging the genocide. No perpetrators prosecuted—Okello fled to Kenya then Uganda, dying 1971. The massacre remains taboo even among survivors' Omani descendants. Complete denial demonstrates how genocide against non-European minorities can be systematically erased from history when ideological narratives (African liberation, anti-imperialism, pan-Africanism) override recognition of Arab victims' humanity.

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