On June 1 and 2, protests over the conviction of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko left at least 16 people dead.
Doudou went out to protest on Friday, June 2, but never returned home. The 34-year-old poultry farmer and father of a one-year-old baby from the Dakar suburb of Bargny had arrived in the Senegalese capital in the afternoon to protest against the two-year prison sentence given to opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. Convicted of “corruption of youth,” Sonko was initially charged with rape by a former employee of a massage parlor. Doudou believed the case was fabricated in a political plot to prevent Sonko from running for president in 2024.
At around 11 pm, Doudou was shot in the stomach and could not be saved by eventual surgery. “We were told nothing could be done, the bullet had done too much damage,” said his father, who is considering lodging a formal complaint, if his family complies.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the poultry farmer is one of 16 victims of the protests of recent days. Sonko’s party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) have calculated the death toll at 19. The situation remains volatile and the death toll is already higher than in March 2021 when 14 died in riots sparked by Sonko’s arrest on his way to court over the same rape case.
For the first two days of June, the Senegalese Red Cross reported 357 wounded, including 36 members of the defense and security forces. Interior Minister Antoine Félix Diome said nearly 500 individuals were arrested, including some in possession of firearms, but declined to give further details.
Presence of armed civilians
According to Abdoulaye Seck, the head of the Senegalese chapter of Amnesty International, which is working to identify the victims and the circumstances of their death, most of the demonstrators killed were shot with live ammunition.
While continuing to call for the resignation of the president, the PASTEF party denounced the organization of a “bloody repression by Macky Sall and his illegal militias” as well as the presence of “illegal repression brigades who usurp the regal prerogatives of our forces of order with impunity.”
The presence of armed civilians in the demonstrations has been confirmed by some observers, including Amnesty International Senegal. “Are they police or are they mobilized by political actors? In any case, we have noticed that they sometimes intervene alongside the police, or at least that their presence is tolerated by the forces of law and order,” Seck said.
His colleague Seydi Gassama, executive director of the Amnesty International Senegal section said “these men act without armbands or badges identifying them as members of the security forces. If they are, their activity is illegal because, in the event of a law enforcement operation, the agents must be clearly identifiable.”
Government counter-offensive in the media
Police officers were also accused of using children to protect themselves from demonstrators after a video showing two officers holding a young boy at arm’s length circulated on social media. Confronting the men in uniform, demonstrators demanded that the boy be released. “We invite the state to seek out and punish the perpetrators of acts compromising the safety and well-being of children,” UNICEF said in a statement on Saturday.
Authorities denied illegal policing had taken place. “The police can’t use a child as a human shield, it’s impossible. Manipulation on social media is commonplace. Who’s to say that this child wasn’t in the process of being saved or protected?” Interior Minister Diome said.
Speaking to the press on Saturday as part of the government’s PR counter-offensive, Diome denounced “attacks by occult forces” and “foreign influence.” He withheld further information “for security reasons” but pointed out that he had seen online videos of “people with firearms […] shooting at the population even though they were not the forces of order and security.”
Earlier on Saturday evening, Tourism Minister Mame Mbaye Niang had addressed the press at the headquarters of the Alliance for the Republic (APR), the presidential party, and also said a “foreign presence” was in the country. The minister, who won his first case against Ousmane Sonko for defamation in early May, called on “Senegal’s youth to organize district by district, municipality by municipality, department by department. We will confront these people who want to throw us into chaos. They must be treated as terrorists and enemies of the nation.”
‘The worst is surely yet to come’
The press briefing was accompanied by suspicious scene. As the Minister of Tourism spoke, many frail young adults in civilian clothes were collecting money elsewhere in the APR headquarters. Outside, parked pick-up trucks without license plates were recognized as the vehicles that carried armed thugs in civilian clothes who were seen suprressing demonstrators during the deadly 2021 protests.
On condition of anonymity, one of the young men explained that he went out into the field to help the law and order forces “to clean up the mess.” According to Pape Mahawa Diouf, spokesman for the Benno Bokk Yakaar (“United in Hope”) presidential coalition, “these are young APR volunteer activists who organize and mobilize to defend their neighborhood and who are making their physical presence felt to ensure that things don’t get out of hand.”
Amnesty International’s Seydi Gassama is alarmed by this climate. “The worst is surely yet to come. If Ousmane Sonko is arrested [he is currently under de facto house arrest at his home] and sent to prison, or if President Sall announces his candidacy [for a third term], the country could well go up in flames,” he said.