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TOGO-VOTE-POLITICS-PROTEST
Togo opposition accuses government of ‘brutal’ crackdown after two killed
in protests
LOME, Dec 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Togo’s opposition has accused the
government of deploying police and soldiers in a brutal crackdown in which
two protesters were killed during a rally against upcoming elections.
Security forces fired teargas and fought running battles on Saturday with
demonstrators in the capital, Lome, and several other cities across the
country.
Both the government and the coalition of 14 opposition parties said there
were unconfirmed reports of a third fatality.
Four members of the security forces were injured and 28 protesters were
detained, the government said.
But the leader of the opposition alliance, Jean-Pierre Fabre, said late
Saturday the authorities had put down the protests with their “customary
brutality”.
The government of President Faure Gnassingbe earlier this week banned 10
planned protests in the run-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for
December 20.
Fabre said the ban, officially on security grounds, was a “fake pretext”
as the vote was organised despite lack of progress in talks brokered by the
regional bloc ECOWAS.
Togo has been hit by a wave of protests since September last year calling
for the re-introduction of two-term limits for presidents and two-round
voting at elections.
But they have developed into calls for the resignation of Gnassingbe, who
has been in power since 2005. His father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, ruled Togo for
38 years.
The opposition has said it will boycott the parliamentary elections
because it objects to the current composition of the independent national
electoral commission.
A defiant Faure praised protesters’ “courage, engagement and
determination” and said they should still try to take to the streets again
between now and December 20.
But the National Alliance for Change (ANC) leader said the opposition was
baffled at the apparent indifference of the international community to calls
for the vote to be delayed.
“We understand even less the silence of ECOWAS to which the ANC directly
appealed… after an increase in barbaric violence against defenceless
civilians,” he said.
BSS/AFP/RY/1610 hrs