Nine jailed after university riots in April

A court in Togo has sentenced nine people to 18 months in jail, accused of causing violence and damage to goods and vehicles during days of protest at the campus last month, which led to violent clashes with the security forces, it said on Monday. Fifteen people were brought before the court after the disturbances, the worst seen in Togo for several years. However, six were released without charge by the state prosecutor Baoubadi Bakaye. Of the nine sentenced, six were students of the university, two were motorbike taxi-drivers and another one a photographer. The students took to the streets on 30 April, to demand an improvement in their living conditions and the payment of government grants that were up to three years in arrears. The verdict infuriated the students’ families present at the trial. “They’re innocent!” cried a girl whose brother, a student in his third year in business management at Lome University, was sentenced to jail. About a hundred young people, singing the national anthem and crying slogans against the Minister of Higher Education, Charles Kondi-Agba, spontaneously marched on the main market of the Lome capital “to inform women and mothers about the verdict,” witnesses said. “Down with injustice!” and “Agba resign!” they shouted, referring to Kondi-Agba. Kondi-Agba closed the University of Lome until further notice last month “in order to facilitate a genuine and constructive dialogue with the students.” According to the minister, the students were manipulated by opponents of President Gnassingbe Eyadema, Africa's longest serving head of state who has ruled this poor West African country for the past 37 years. He accused them of throwing molotov cocktails, crude bombs, at the police and attempting to disrupt recently opened negotiations with the European Union aimed at restoring EU aid to Togo for the first time since 1993. Students denied these accusations. Two weeks before the demonstration, they presented Kondi-Agba with a list of grievances on behalf of the 15,000 students at Lome University and Kara University in the north. These included a demand for the payment of bursary arrears amounting to 80,000 CFA, around US$ 150 per student. In their trial, students claimed the use of excessive force by police. Witnesses said students were injured when police beat them with sticks and opened fire on them with tear gas and live ammunition. A nurse said that the security forces threatened her because she did not want to let them beat a sick student in the university infirmary. “They said to me: ‘Lady, if you don’t give in, I’ll fire gas on you!’” the nurse told the court. She added that she let them go on beating the student on his sick-bed. The 14 lawyers for the defense, from RADAR, the Network of Lawyers against Arbitrary Custody, said they would appeal against the decision. “The battle is still going on, we’ll appeal,” said Isabelle Ameganvi, one of the defence lawyers.