2023-08-18 20:17:45
Did you miss the latest events on the conflict in Niger? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening at 8 p.m. Who did what ? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below.
The fact of the day
The UN denounced the military who seized power in Niamey “on a whim”, saying that “the very notion of freedom in Niger is at stake”. “Generals cannot arrogate to themselves the right to defy – on a whim – the will of the people. The law of weapons has no place in today’s world,” said Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement. The latter also called on the generals to release Bazoum and “immediately restore constitutional order”. He also called for “free and full access to humanitarian aid” in the country, one of the poorest in the world, very vulnerable to climate change and undermined by the violence of various armed jihadist groups.
It should be noted that the chiefs of staff of the West African armies were gathered for the second day in Ghana, with a view to a possible armed intervention in Niger. Nothing had filtered at the end of the day of the possible conclusions of the military officials of the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
sentence of the day
President Bazoum, democratically elected, remains Niger’s legitimate head of state. His conditions of detention are deteriorating. Any further deterioration in his state of health will have serious consequences.
These are the words of the President of the European Council Charles Michel pronounced during an interview with the President of Nigeria Bola Tinubu.
The number of the day
28. This is the number of civilians who were killed earlier this week in violence in several villages in southwestern Niger, near Mali, a local official source said on Friday, a toll that could be heavier according to a source safe. Some bodies “were carried by the river” Niger, said a senior official from the Tillabéri region where the violence took place. Four departments were affected by this violence, which began “on August 15 at dusk (…) and ended at midday on August 16”, he said, without indicating the origin of their outbreak.
The trend of the day
False rumours, hijacked videos, manipulated audios: the recent military coup in Niger has put a piece in the disinformation machine that has been raging in the Sahel for months, against a backdrop of growing divisions between West African countries. Since July 26 and the coup d’etat in Niger that overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, AFP has verified some fifteen misleading allegations on social networks, aiming sometimes to discredit, sometimes to support the soldiers who took the power.
Among them, amateur images of a demonstration in support of Bazoum, held on the first day of the crisis, were shared several times on X (ex-Twitter) and Facebook in the days that followed, wrongly suggesting that various marches have been organized by his supporters.
However, for Ikemesit Effiong, research director of the Nigerian consulting firm SBM Intelligence, the disinformation campaign targeting Niger does not seem “particularly well coordinated or centrally managed”, in a region “where anti-imperialist and anti-imperialist opinions -Western ones are popular and easy to sell”. Finally, Pan-Africanist activists “have forged themselves into allies of circumstance” of Russia, in particular to convey a feeling of rejection of France.
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