Senegal in the wind: 15 dead in Dakar protests

Protests erupted in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, in early June, after a court sentenced prominent dissident Osmane Sonko to two years in prison on charges of “corrupting youth”, which reduces his chances of running in next year's presidential elections.

The court also charged Sonko, 48, with raping a beauty salon worker in 2021 and threatening to kill her. He denied the accusations and boycotted the court proceedings.

Although the court acquitted him of these charges, it found him guilty of corrupting youth under the age of 21, without mentioning the clarification of the immoral allegations for which he was imprisoned.

With the entry of the fifth day of protests, the death toll reached 15, and the violence also spread to other cities, where the army deployed its forces to suppress the youth demonstrators.

Senegal is considered one of the most politically stable countries in Africa in general, and West Africa in particular. Its current president is Macky Sall, 61, who was re-elected for the second time in April 2019.

Sall himself had focused in his first campaign in 2012 on returning to five-year presidential terms instead of the previous seven years that former President Abdoulaye Wade restored. He also said he would ensure that no leader could serve more than two terms.

According to many commentators, Sall's desire to run for a third term is the main reason for the outbreak of the recent protests, in conjunction with the court's decision to imprison Sonko.

According to Musa Amadou, a writer specializing in West African affairs, the correct context for the recent Dakar events is ignored if confined to the imprisonment of the political opponent Sonko.

“There is no doubt that Sonko’s imprisonment unleashed the protests. But the protests were inevitable because of President Sall’s desire to break the cycle of peaceful transfer of power by his will to violate his promise that he brought to power not to run for a third term,” Amadou told Jusoor Post.

“Sall lost much of his popular base, especially among the youth, after the events of 2021, which erupted after the arrest of the opposition leader Sonko, who finished third in the 2019 elections. But the matter began with Sall's first term, after his visit to French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the time, days before the latter's defeat in the French elections of 2012, as well as after the scandal of Sall's personal wealth, which he was accused of having earned during his position as prime minister,” Amadou added.

According to Reuters, the Senegalese government announced on Sunday, June 5, that it had cut off access to mobile internet services in certain areas due to deadly riots in which hate and subversive messages were spread online.

Many human rights organizations accused the decision, which affected many people's access to social networks (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp), and considered it a violation of freedom of expression.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all those involved in the events to exercise restraint, while African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki strongly condemned the violence and urged leaders to avoid actions that “tarnish the face of Senegalese democracy, of which Africa has always been proud.”