2023-06-06 18:58:14
Violence has shaken Senegal, a benchmark country for stability and democracy in Africa, since on June 2 the legal proceedings against opposition leader Ousmane Sonko culminated in a two-year prison sentence for corruption of minors, which could disqualify him from running for elections. presidential elections of February 2024.
Since Sunday, May 28, the 48-year-old politician has been held at his home in the capital, Dakar, by the security forces who, after taking away his phones and computer, keep him together with his family, including children, incommunicado and not They allow no one to go out, or their lawyers, fellow party members and other relatives to visit.
Thousands of demonstrators have been protesting since the 2nd in support of Sonko in the streets, highways and universities of Dakar, as well as in Ziguinchor, of which Sonko is mayor, in Saint-Louis and other parts of the country. By burning tires and throwing stones they respond to the police, who use tear gas, live ammunition and young civilians as human shields; Uniformed agents as well as infiltrators in plain clothes are using force forcefully.
state repression, So far, it has claimed 16 deathswhich are added to the, at least 12 victims (between the ages of 12 and 35) that occurred when this conflict began in 2021.
Both Sonko’s committee of lawyers and leaders of his party, the PASTEF (African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity) ask, in statements and appeals on social networks, the international community to demand an end to violence and arrests of civilians, and an end to restrictions to basic freedoms, which includes the interruption of Internet communications. Also the lifting of the siege for more than a week around Sonko’s house in Dakar, where “Ousmane Sonko, his two wives and five children between the ages of 8 and 15 are incommunicado, with problems even eating because they are not allowed to go out to buy food or no one can enter to give it to them”, according to the historic coordinator of PASTEF Spain, Seynabou Helene Seye, currently in France.
Protests also in Spain
“The protests are not going to stop, neither in Senegal nor in the diaspora,” Jo Mbaye, coordinator of PASTEF Madrid, told elDiario.es. “Macky Sall has already fooled us twice with his mafia system and the third time it doesn’t work.” Mbaye made these statements on Monday the 5th, after a protest before the Senegalese Consulate in Madrid. Last weekend, there were also rallies in Zaragoza and Barcelona, and on Tuesday they were repeated again in Madrid, in Nelson Mandela square, and in Bilbao, in Doctor Fleming square, organized by Forces Vives du Senegal (F24), a grouping of parties and social movements fighting for democracy and justice in Senegal. On Wednesday the 7th another protest is called in Malaga.
For his part, Momadou Diagne, spokesperson in Madrid for the group “Xalaat ak Xelli” (Reflection and Action) explains that they were set up three months ago “to raise awareness about the situation of the Senegalese in Spain and about that of our country, but the crisis A policy that has exploded forces us to take the leap with actions coordinated by the Spanish geography to denounce the serious attack on democracy and the great repression underway”.
The Senegalese community in Spain has about 80,000 people, although the F24 call calls to join “the African and Afro-descendant sisters and brothers” and “the organizations and international civil society”. Mbaye assures that they will demonstrate until the president announces that he is resigning from his third term “because this is no longer about Sonko but about our freedom, security and democracy.”
The activist clarifies that, “although Sall and his family are going to resist for fear that under Sonko’s mandate his corruption will be revealed, judged and condemned, we Senegalese will know how to avoid civil war with our heads.” Another member of PASTEF Madrid, who prefers to remain anonymous, points out: “The government is already cutting off supplies, the markets are closed, there is a lack of food and when people protest the police, soldiers and the secret police beat and kill them. They are already Senegalese attacking Senegalese. Everything, even war, can be expected from Sall, the worst president since independence in the 1960s.
ElDiario.es contacted this Monday, by phone and email, with the Senegalese Embassy and Consulate General in Madrid, but received no response. Today, Tuesday the 6th, the Embassy confirmed to this newspaper that all Senegalese consulates are closed by order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dakar.
Get rid of opposing candidates
The country has reached this situation after on March 3, 2021, Ousmane Sonko, who was left third in the 2019 election but it is being configured as the great hope of the opposition for 2024, he was arrested and accused of “repeated rape” and “death threats” to the employee of a massage center.
Sonko admitted going to that place to treat back ailments, but denied any forced or consensual sexual relationship with the woman. The great popular mobilization that took place at that time achieved the release of Sonko on March 8, 2021, although the cost was very high: In addition to the fifteen deaths -for whose deaths no one has been tried-, 500 protesters were arrested, 350 people brought to justice and 150 imprisoned; Two national TV channels accused of promoting the insurrection were closed, the Internet was blocked, and the telephones and social networks of politicians, activists, and human rights defenders were tapped.
What has since been a tense lull in Senegal has now exploded with two consecutive Sonko trials, between late May and early June. The first, promoted by the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang, who accused Sonko of defamation for having blamed him for the mismanagement of 44 million euros, citing a report by the General State Inspectorate (IGE). Sonko acknowledged that he was wrong and that the report was from the General Finance Inspectorate (IGF), but was sentenced on May 30 to two months in prison and a fine of 305,000 euros.
In the second trial, whose verdict was announced on June 2, the judge dismissed the charges of “repeated rape” and “death threats”, but sentenced the opponent to two years in prison and a fine of 900 euros for “corruption of the youth”, crime that consists of “inducing debauchery” to minors under 21 years of age (the complainant was 20 years old at the time of the events).
If the convictions against Sonko have been received with such popular indignation, it is because they occur in a context where the current president does not rule out running for a third term in the 2024 presidential elections, despite the fact that he himself approved the constitutional limitation of two presidential terms.
Also, since Sall has been in power, Sonko is the third opposition candidate with signs of unseating him who is disqualified in court, after Karim Wade, son of former President Abdoulaye Wade, accused of “illicit enrichment” in 2013; and the former mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, accused of embezzlement without being found guilty.
On the other hand, the legal proceedings against Sonko have been truffled with impediments to their team of lawyersmade up of lawyers from Senegal and France: one of them was suddenly suspended from practicing and the French Juan Branco was denied entry to Senegal, at Dakar airport.
feminist controversy
The trial against the opponent for “repeated rape” and “death threats”, charges for which he was not convicted, has also raised certain controversy between different feminist sectors Senegalese: while some lament the scant credibility given to the complainant and the precedent it sets, others criticize the use of women to get rid of Sonko as a political adversary.
All of this, in a country where this very May it transpired that Twenty-seven girls, between the ages of 10 and just over 12, had been raped by their Koranic teacher (o marabout), who would have fled after the case was made public, without the authorities acting beforehand despite complaints from the families of the minors.
“The thing about the masseuse is a montage,” says the PASTEF Madrid activist, anonymously. “They are lies to disable him,” she adds. However, it is not clear if the conviction for “inducing debauchery” is enough to invalidate Sonko as a presidential candidate, as would have happened in the case of “repeated rape”.
The human rights organization Amnesty International urged for “the authorities to immediately stop the violence and restore social media.” The director of the NGO for West and Central Africa, Samira Daoud, specified that “restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and information constitute arbitrary measures contrary to international law and cannot be justified by security imperatives.”
For his part, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, through your spokesperson Deputy Farhan Haq said on Saturday that he “strongly condemns the use of violence, calls for calm and urges all actors to exercise restraint.”
According to Mbaye, “the international community is not reacting as the situation deserves.” “The EU and the rest of the world are not doing anything (…) they have a lot to do with what is happening, they interfere in our countries because they want our resources. Let us Senegalese choose!
This is precisely one of the reasons behind the popularity of Sonko, a law graduate from the prestigious Gaston Berger University of Saint-Louis, who worked for fifteen years as a tax inspector before founding PASTEF in 2014 and beginning to uncover evil. use of state resources by the Sall government, which earned him his dismissal in 2016. A year later he published the book ‘Oil and gas in Senegal. Time.news of a looting’, a claim for African self-determination against the former colonial metropolises, especially France, and for the reappropriation of its resources. Sonko is in the same line of a new generation of pan-Africanist leaders.
Spain, an important partner of Senegal
In a statement, the Group for Reflection and Action of Senegalese in the diaspora Xaalat ak Xelli demands that “the Spanish State activate all the mechanisms to denounce the violation of human rights committed by President Macky Sall” given the condition of Spain “as an important partner of Senegal, with multiple and diverse interests” in particular “in the exploitation of our fishing that employed thousands of young Senegalese but that today, fleeced by foreign companies, condemns them to undertake dangerous migratory routes to Spain and Europe”.
Precisely, more than 230 people in a dozen cayucos have reached the Canary Islands, through the Atlantic route. Although the country of origin of the migrants has not been made public, sources from the Association for Human Rights of Andalusia confirm that the arrival of Senegalese over the Strait route has experienced a significant increase over the total number of nationalities in the last two months.
This same week, in an act of the Vice President of the Government Yolanda Díaz with women leaders of the Social Economy in Spain, the a Declaration of Intent with the Senegalese minister of Microfinance, Victorine Anquediche Ndeye, to “promote cooperation in the field of Social Economy, as has also been done with other countries such as France, Germany or Colombia,” according to a statement from Moncloa. President Pedro Sanchez paid a visit to Senegal in 2021precisely to address the migration issue and promote Spain’s economic interests in the African country.
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