Five leaders of protest against new tax charged with plotting against state

Niger has jailed five leaders of recent protests against a new tax on basic food stuffs, and has charged them with plotting against the state and forming an unauthorised association, government officials said on Wednesday. The five were members of the “Coalition Against Costly Living,” an alliance of civil society groups that has staged two major protests so far this month against the government's imposition of a 19 percent value added tax (VAT) on basic foodstuffs and other essentials of life. On 15 March, the coaltion staged one of the biggest street protests seen in this landlocked West African country in recent years. Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the capital, Niamey. This demonstration was followed by a one-day general strike a week later that turned the city into a ghost town. The coalition has called another one-day strike for Thursday. The five arrested men, who risk up to 20 years imprisonment if found guilty of the charges, were detained between Friday and Sunday after some of them went on private radio and television urging Muslim and Christian leaders to hold prayers over the Easter weekend to save the country from misery. "People are free to demonstrate and show their disapproval. That's their right. But when they make veiled calls to rebellion, that's another matter," government spokesman Mohamed Ben Omar told IRIN by telephone from Niamey. Lawyers for the five men say the authorities are using back-handed methods to put a stop to demonstrations against an unpopular law introduced in January which slapped VAT on everyday items such as flour, milk and sugar, as well as electricity and water. "We believe they are not under arrest, but are hostages," one of the lawyers Souley Oumarou told Radio France Internationale on Wednesday. But the government spokesman shrugged off such allegations. "The coalition leaders were charged and placed under a committal order," Ben Omar said. "From that moment on the government has nothing to do with it." The coalition says the new tax is crippling in a country reeling from the effects of drought and locust invasion which is ranked as the second poorest in the world by the UN Human Development Index. According to the United Nations, more than 60 percent of Niger's 11 million people live on less than a dollar a day. The government argues the hikes are needed to boost government revenues and the budget deficit. Protests against the tax come only three months after President Mamadou Tandja, a 66-year-old retired army colonel, was re-elected for a second five-year term in a vote which foreign observers described as free and fair. "The opposition are in a hurry. They lost elections three months ago and want to use other means to hasten the fall of the government," Ben Omar said. Tandja took office amid warnings of a looming food shortage due to a dire combination in 2004 of hungry locusts and patchy rainfall. The government estimates more than three million people are at risk of hunger and record food imports will be required this year to avert a famine. Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for US$3 million to help feed some 400,000 people in Niger.