In Senegal, 51 people have died in protests since 2007, according to Amnesty International Senegal. And only 14 of these cases resulted in convictions and sanctions ” sometimes very weak “. The explanations around these figures.
With our correspondent in Dakar, Thea Olivier
The report is heavy: in Senegal, there were 14 deaths during the riots of March 2021, and three during the protests banned from June 2022. Ousmane Diallo, a researcher at Amnesty International’s regional office in Dakar, noted an evolution in policing in the country:
” More and more military structures, which are not empowered to maintain order, are deployed in this context. We have seen that this has caused cases of death following bullets. Over the past twenty years, we can note a deterioration in the framework of law enforcement relating to the protection of the freedom to demonstrate. »
Amnesty International recalls the request of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to repeal the ministerial decree of 2011, which prohibits demonstrations of a political nature in the central Plateau district.
According to Ousmane Diallo, restrictions on freedoms have always provoked violence between police and demonstrators. ” The notable exception are the demonstrations of March 2021, where there were sometimes cases of looting and destruction of public and private property. But over the past ten years, we cannot speak of a deterioration or degradation of the processes of demonstration, but rather of an increasingly abusive restriction of the freedoms to demonstrate peacefully which leads to unrest. »
Ousmane Diallo also points to the lack of investigations and legal proceedings.