DAKAR, Senegal – The most common demonstrations in Senegal in years continued for Friday for the third day, an expression of anger against the president, Macky Sall, and outrage over the arrest of the country’s leading opposition figure, who is accused of rape.
In Dakar, the capital, crowds of young people threw stones at police firing tear gas. In the Medina neighborhood, a police van in a group of protesters accelerated and nearly killed them. In Ngor, a fishing village bordering the city’s most popular district, protesters lit fires in the streets.
One person was killed on Thursday when security forces used live ammunition on protesters in Bignona, a city in the south of the country, according to the human rights organization Amnesty International.
The arrest of the opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, was the trigger for Senegalese young people on Wednesday, many of whom Mr. Sonko supports, up the street. Mr. Sonko, who came third during the 2019 presidential election, is accused of raping a young woman who worked in a massage parlor.
But protesters on Friday expressed a variety of grievances: few jobs, economic hardship caused by pandemics, and a president who viewed them as arrogant, incompetent and dictatorial. “We are so tired,” said Coumba Traoré, a young businesswoman emerging from the protest in the city center, noting in particular her frustration with the 9pm curfew around the pandemic.
The young woman who Mr. Sonko accused of rape appeared in a closed court hearing last month, but her case was not adjudicated. Mr. Sonko denies the charge.
Protesters see the case as part of a pattern of government eliminating political opponents.
According to them, the much-desired democracy is at stake.
This is how current president Macky Sall came to power in 2012: a youth movement thwarted the efforts of his predecessor to seek a third term.
But after nine years with mr. Hall in power, a week’s deep crisis in our democracy has been exposed ‘, wrote Felwine Sarr, a Senegalese historian, adding that the event’ likes to be exemplary by always comparing itself to less successful on the continent. ”
Cheikh Oumar Cyrille Touré, a well-known rapper, also known as Thiat, said in a television debate on Wednesday: “Nothing works in this country while they are still giving us political speeches.”
He was co-founder of the group Y’en a Marre (we are fed up), which contributed to Mr. Sall to bring to power. But Touré was arrested in the protests on Friday and beaten violently, according to the Y’en a Marre Facebook group.
Two television stations, Sen TV and Walf TV, were taken off the air, accused by the government of seeking insurrection by showing images of insurgency.
Protesters on Thursday raided the buildings that house two other media organizations, RFM and Le Soleil, both of which are seen as government problems.
Mr. Sonko was arrested on Wednesday on his way to court. His convoy was stopped and police asked him to follow another route. When he refused, he was arrested.
Amnesty International said that Mr. Sonko was arbitrarily arrested and urged the government to stop arresting opponents and activists.
During Mr. Sall’s term of office also saw two of his biggest opponents, a mayor of Dakar and the son of the last president, arrested and sent to prison.
Sonko’s supporters say the Senegalese president is behind his arrest and the rape charges. They say he is trying to stop one of his biggest political challengers from running in the next election in 2024.
“That’s why he does it all,” said Serigne Fallou Sarr, a biology student who protested in Dakar on Friday.
He said he had no idea if the rape charges were true.
The voice of the woman who accused Sonko was drowned in a sea of accusations and conspiracy theories.
The woman, a young masseuse who said Sonko also threatened to kill her, told police that the politician, who admitted he was a regular visitor to the massage parlor where she worked, told her frequently asked for sex and when she refused, strangled and raped.
The president denied that he had anything to do with the rape charges in an interview with television France24 that was protested this week.
“We must not confuse the president in things that do not concern him,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. “I think I have enough things to do without planning such low things.”
Sall has not commented on reports that he may be eligible for a third term, which his opponents say would violate the constitution.