French President Francois Hollande arrived in the Nigerien capital on Friday to discuss the deployment of French troops as part of a strategy for securing the wider Sahelian region.
Approximately 10 activists, including Ali Idrissa, the coordinator of the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coalition, were arrested at their homes that morning.
The group had held a joint press conference on Thursday calling for peaceful demonstrations during Hollande’s visit. They are calling for Areva, the French state-owned nuclear company, and the Nigerien government to publish the details of a new uranium extraction contract.
“This goes to show that we’re living in a dictatorship,” Idrissa said from his office in Niamey after being released. “We wanted to exercise our democratic right to protest. This is really serious.”
He said he had been treated well in detention, but was told that police would return after Hollande’s visit to take him to court.
His fellow campaigners, including trade union activist Solli Ramatou, remain in detention. Idrissa was unclear exactly how many people had been arrested.
Niger agreed upon terms with Areva in May over the extraction of uranium from its mines in the north, after months of negotiations. Although the government insisted that it had secured the best deal for its people, including increased investment in the sector and the promise that Nigeriens would be promoted to top management, it has yet to disclose precise terms.
PWYP and other groups have repeatedly asked for full transparency and confirmation that Areva had agreed to increase the royalty rate it pays from 5 percent to 12 percent, as required by the country’s 2006 mining code. A constitution passed in 2010 by a transitional government stated that by law all contracts agreed with natural resource companies must be published.
“We condemn the arrests of Nigerien civil society activists by the government,” PWYP spokesperson Alice Powell said from the coalition’s office in London. “Niger’s citizens should be free to debate how their natural resources should be managed. It is very disappointing to see the government shut down debate in this manner.”
The Nigerien government was not available for comment.
It was the second stop in the French president’s visit. He was due to arrive in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, yesterday, which has agreed to host the command center for the French regional deployment to Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad.
The soldiers to be sent to Niger are expected to be supporting a US surveillance drones base, which opened last year to monitor the activities of Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS