Coastal town stands deserted after residents flee to Benin

School classrooms are half-empty, the once bustling city market is deserted and security has been tightened in this coastal town that saw some of Togo’s worst election violence two weeks ago. At the entrance to Aneho, 45 km east of the capital Lome, police manning checkpoints were checking car boots this week for suspicious luggage, highlighting the political tension that persists in Togo in the wake of a disputed 24 April presidential election. In a controversial father-son transition, Faure Gnassingbe was last week declared official winner of the poll and sworn in as president, after 38 years of rule by his late father Gnassingbe Eyadema. As opposition claims of a rigged vote fuelled mammoth street protests in the capital Lome and other towns in this tiny West African nation, angry youths torched the Union Hotel on the outskirts of Aneho because it supposedly belonged to supporters of Gnassingbe’s ruling Rally for the Republic party (RPT). The hotel’s neon lights have been smashed, the TVs and radios bust and the building left as a gutted ruin by the wayside. Burned homes and vehicles dot the town of 25,000 people that in colonial times was the capital of Togo. Even the main police station stands empty, a desolate witness of the urban warfare that took place between opposition youths and security forces in the days following the vote. Violence in the town broke out on the eve of the election and re-erupted the following week. In a suburb known as Habitat, where several houses were burned to the ground, the remains of deep trenches can be seen on the roads and a small soap factory said by residents to have belonged to opposition supporters has been totally razed. When troops and paramilitary forces stepped in heavy-handedly to remove the opposition barricades in Aneho and quell the unrest, streams of people fled the town to the safety of Benin, a few kilometres down the road. According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 12,000 Togolese refugees have been registered in Benin since April 26, when the electoral commission announced that Gnassingbe had won the election with 60 percent of the vote according to provisional results. In Aneho many of those who fled were young supporters of his opposition rival Emmanuel Bob-Akitani who had been manning the barricades. Few of them have returned.

Map of Togo

Students have not come home At the College of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, a maths teacher, who asked that his name be withheld, told IRIN “today only 50 percent of the youngsters are present.” Asked where the missing students were, he replied: “across the border. My cousins Kankoe and Snyi are there too.” The teacher said that at the Protestant church service last Sunday the congregation was asked “for contributions to help our brothers in Benin." "We were told they were planning on going to school there,” he added, indicating that they would be away for some time. “Even some of the teachers are missing,” the teacher noted. He said that the history and geography teacher, who was also a journalist on Radio Lumiere, a local radio station accused of favouring the opposition, had failed to return to the school. Radio Lumiere premises were torched during the unrest and its transmitter and antenna pulled to the ground. “The soldiers did it,” one resident said.

Togolese opposition supporter says he was attacked by ruling party members with machetes

Aneho's King harassed On the other side of town, inside the royal household of the Guin ethnic group, Radio Ocean FM too was pulled off the air and the station’s windows smashed by soldiers, a radio technician said. “That same day the King was arrested and dunked in a gutter,” the king’s secretary, Lawson Latevi, told IRIN. “The army chief of staff subsequently sent delegations led by officers to offer apologies to King Zankli Lawson VIII,” he added. A member of the royal household, who gave his name only as Pascal, told IRIN that: “It’s very quiet here now. Most houses are almost empty. People haven’t forgotten what happened when the troops came by.” Diplomats have estimated that around 100 people were killed and hundreds injured in Togo’s election unrest. Like many other young men, Pascal dares not venture too far from home for fear of political reprisal so he follows the orders of the 52-year-old monarch not to go further than 300 metres from the household. Since fleeing to Benin, a few of the young opposition militants have slipped back across the border briefly to fetch cash or possessions. "I came back to get some clean clothes,” said Anani, a mechanic who was back on a flying visit. replace -CAPTION- with the correct caption.

Togolese refugees at the border with Benin

Economy grinds to a halt With thousands of residents gone, business is slack. “My earnings have fallen 50 percent,” said the manager of a bar on the banks of Lake Togo. “There’s no one left here, who’s going to come for a drink? I close up at 8 p.m. now instead of 10 p.m.” Likewise, the once bustling Aneho market stands virtually empty, with stalls closed and no customers. With foodstuffs rare, prices are beginning to soar. Da Kayi, who sells food on the street-side, said the cost of a bowl of corn had increased 25 percent since the trouble began “because the market sellers have run away with the stocks.” Petrol too is on the rise. “It’s gone up 25 percent,” said Bernard, who drives a moped taxi. “So now I can barely earn a proper day’s wage because petrol’s too expensive.” Business is unlikely to improve as frightened residents stay away or locked indoors until Togo’s future becomes clearer. The international community, which rubber-stamped Gnassingbe’s election as being generally free and fair though not flawless, has urged the new head of state to bring the opposition into a government of national unity. The opposition, led by the exiled Gilchrist Olympio, has refused to do a deal with Gnassingbe, whose election it says was a fraud. But it has so far failed so far to come with an alternative strategy. “What is the opposition doing?” complained Father Thomas at Aneho Roman Catholic cathedral. “Why aren’t they helping the wounded and the refugees? Why aren’t they helping us?”