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AS IT HAPPENED
Thousands of Niger coup supporters protest near French military base
Thousands of Niger coup supporters rallied near a French military base in Niger on Friday. The protesters were heard shouting “Down with France, down with ECOWAS”. Earlier in the day, the European Union and the African Union criticised the worsening conditions of detained Niger President Mohamed Bazoum and called for his immediate release. Read about the day’s events as they unfolded on our live blog.
Issued on: 11/08/2023 – 00:16
Modified: 11/08/2023 – 22:29
10 min
Supporters of Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) gather to demonstrate near a French airbase in Niamey on August 11, 2023.
Supporters of Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) gather to demonstrate near a French airbase in Niamey on August 11, 2023. © AFP
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This live page is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the crisis in Niger click here.
10:20pm: FRANCE 24 speaks with Human Rights Watch about President Bazoum’s worsening condition
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has received an update on the condition of Niger’s President Bazoum and his family after more than three weeks of being held hostage.
Eye on Africa’s Georja Calvin-Smith spoke with HRW’s Deputy Africa Director Carine Kaneza Nantulya for the details.
“We were told that President Bazoum’s family has had no electricity since August 2nd and no contact with the outside world since August 4th,” Kaneza says.
To watch the interview in full, please click on the video below.
02:46
9:36pm: Cape Verde president says he opposes military intervention in Niger
The president of ECOWAS-member country Cape Verde, Jose Maria Neves, spoke out against military intervention on Friday and said his country was unlikely to participate in such a campaign.
“We must all work to re-establish constitutional order in Niger, but under no circumstances through military intervention or armed conflict,” he said, according to national television.
9:24pm: Thousands protest outside French military base in ‘a show of defiance’
Thousands of coup supporters demonstrated in front of a French army base in Niger’s capital Niamey on Friday evening. The protests came just hours after ECOWAS made moves towards a possible military intervention in the country.
FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent, reporting from Abuja, says, “The message from the crowds today was very much one of the coup leaders and their supporters digging in”.
It’s “a show of defiance a day after ECOWAS leaders announced that they were activating its standby forces”, she says.
03:39
8:12pm: ‘There has been strong resistance by the junta to negotiations’
Talking to FRANCE 24, Director of the Africa Programme at the Egmont Institute of International Relations Nina Wilen says despite external pressure the junta is “not ready to step down … [that] there has been strong resistance by the junta to negotiations”.
Though, Wilen says, this unwillingness to negotiate may lead to ECOWAS intervening militarily. Nigerian President and ECOWAS Chief Bola Tinubu “has been elected on the slogan of stopping the coups, so he has a personal interest in stopping coups and gaining credibility for ECOWAS”, she says.
05:52
7:19pm: Niger misses treasury bond repayment of €17 million
Niger has failed to pay 12 billion CFA francs (€17 million) on treasury bonds due on Friday, the West African debt agency Umoa-Titres said in statement.
The agency noted the payments were missed in the context of sanctions imposed by the West African Economic and Monetary Union following a military takeover late last month.
6:32pm: Hundreds of coup supporters protest outside French military base in Niger
Hundreds of coup supporters rallied near a French military base in Niger on Friday. Protesters near the base, located on the outskirts of the capital Niamey, shouted “Down with France, down with ECOWAS”, a reference to the West African bloc which on Thursday approved deployment of a “standby force to restore constitutional order”.
Many brandished Russian and Niger flags and yelled their support for the country’s new strongman, General Abdourahamane Tiani.
“We are going to make the French leave! ECOWAS isn’t independent, it’s being manipulated by France,” one demonstrator, Aziz Rabeh Ali, told AFP.
Former colonial power France has around 1,500 personnel in Niger as part of a force battling an eight-year-old jihadist insurgency.
5:25pm: Russian foreign ministry says intervention in Niger would trigger ‘destabilisation’
Russia on Friday warned against military intervention in Niger, a day after West African leaders said they would muster a “standby” force in their efforts to return the president toppled by a coup.
“We believe that a military solution to the crisis in Niger could lead to a protracted confrontation in that African country, and to a sharp destabilisation of the situation in the Sahara-Sahel region as a whole,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
4:44pm: Concern rises for safety of President Bazoum
FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent has the latest on the deteriorating condition of President Mohamed Bazoum and the evolving situation in Niamey.
“The junta came out with an extraordinary threat according to several diplomatic sources saying they were willing to kill the ousted president if an ECOWAS military intervention was launched,” says Norris Trent.
To watch the report in full, please click on the video below.
bazoum01:44
bazoum © FRANCE24 screengrab
4:24pm: UN rights chief concerned about treatment of ousted Niger president
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday expressed concern for the deposed president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, and his family, saying that the conditions in which they were being held were “rapidly deteriorating”.
“Credible reports I have received indicate that the conditions of detention could amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights law,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.
3:05pm: ‘It’s hard to see how this has a good resolution’
FRANCE 24 spoke with Michael Shurkin, an expert in European defence and West African politics and security, about the ongoing crisis in West Africa.
The military junta and ECOWAS are in a “standoff”, says Shurkin. “There is very little likelihood of a diplomatic solution, I don’t see how the junta could be talked into backing down … the idea of military interventions seems horribly risky to me.”
“It’s hard to see how this has a good resolution,” says Shurkin.
To watch the interview in full, please click on the video below.
06:39
2:41pm: West African military chiefs to meet in Ghana, date unconfirmed
West African army chiefs are planning a meeting next week to prepare plans for a possible military intervention in Niger, a spokesperson for regional bloc ECOWAS said on Friday.
Earlier in the day, a Nigerian official and an Ivory Coast army source had said the meeting would be held on Saturday in Ghana.
12:14pm: Air France extends suspension of flights to Mali and Burkina Faso
Air France has extended “until August 18” the suspension of its flights to and from Bamako and Ouagadougou “following the coup d’état in Niger and due to the geopolitical situation in the Sahel region”, the airline said on Friday.
The carrier had announced on Monday that it was suspending flights to Mali and Burkina Faso until Friday inclusive, shortly after the closure of airspace in neighbouring Niger.
The authorities in Mali and Burkina Faso support the perpetrators of the coup d’état in Niger on July 26.
12:13pm: African Union calls treatment of detained Niger leader ‘unacceptable’
The African Union on Friday expressed “deep concern” at the reported poor conditions of Niger President Mohamed Bazoum’s detention, calling his treatment at the hands of coup leaders “unacceptable”.
“Such treatment of a democratically elected president through a regular electoral process is unacceptable,” AU Commission head Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement, joining a chorus of concern about 63-year-old Bazoum, who was overthrown by military chiefs last month.
“Concordant sources attest to a worrying deterioration” of conditions, Faki said.
11:59am What does a standby military force activated by ECOWAS mean?
ECOWAS is still saying it hopes for a diplomatic solution to the situation in Niger.
However on Thursday the West African bloc approved a “standby” military force.
FRANCE 24’s senior reporter Catherine Norris-Trent, reporting from neighbouring Nigeria, tells us more.
02:30
© france24
11:55am: African Union backs ECOWAS’s decisions on Niger
The African Union said on Friday it supports West African regional bloc ECOWAS’s decisions on Niger and called on the international community to save the life of President Mohamed Bazoum, whose detention conditions are deteriorating.
ECOWAS said on Thursday that all options were still on the table to overturn Niger’s coup and decided to activate a standby force for possible military intervention.
11:09am: Burkina junta suspends radio station over Niger criticism
Burkina Faso’s junta-led government has suspended one of the country’s most popular radio stations after it broadcast an interview deemed “insulting” to Niger’s new military leaders.
Radio Omega was immediately suspended on Thursday “until further notice”, Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement. He said the measure was “in the higher interests of the Nation”.
The station, part of the Omega media group owned by journalist and former foreign minister Alpha Barry, ceased broadcasting after the statement was issued late Thursday.
The channel had run an interview with Ousmane Abdoul Moumouni, the spokesman of a newly-established Nigerien group campaigning to return President Mohamed Bazoum to power.
Moumouni made “insulting comments with regard to the new Nigerien authorities”, said Ouedraogo, who is also government spokesman. His organisation “is clearly campaigning for violence and war against the sovereign people of Niger” and seeks to restore Bazoum “by every means”, he charged.
9:59am: EU ‘deeply concerned’ over detention conditions of Niger president
The EU on Friday criticised the worsening conditions of detained Niger President Mohamed Bazoum and called for his immediate release after he was deposed in a coup.
“The EU reiterates it is deeply concerned at the deteriorating conditions in which the president is being detained. Mohamed Bazoum and his family, according to the latest information, have been deprived of food, electricity and medical care for several days,” EU foreign policy chief
03:39
0 posted online.
4:46am: US says it will hold Niger junta accountable for detained leader’s safety
The United States will hold the junta that took power in Niger accountable for the safety of democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, his family, and detained members of the government, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday.
“The United States joins the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in calling for the restoration of constitutional order in Niger,” Blinken said in a statement released by the US State Department.
00:05am: Blinken says US backs ECOWAS efforts on Niger
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced support for efforts of the West African bloc ECOWAS on Niger, without explicitly backing its call at a summit for military intervention.
“ECOWAS, an organisation that brings together West African countries, is playing a key role in making clear the imperative of a return to constitutional order, and we very much support ECOWAS’ leadership and work on this,” he said on Thursday.
The United States has in recent days cautioned that military force should only be a last resort and that diplomacy was the best way to resolve the crisis.
Hours earlier, the West African bloc ordered the activation of a standby force for possible use against the junta in Niger. Reporting from Abuja in neighbouring Nigeria, FRANCE 24’s senior reporter Catherine Norris-Trent said it could take weeks for ECOWAS to get such a force together, but that it sends a strong signal.
“There’s an awful lot about this that isn’t clear,” she said. “We don’t know the locations, the timings, the budget, nor indeed [have any] final confirmation on which troops from which countries would be involved.
“It could take weeks to get a regional force together.”
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But, she said, ECOWAS is “ramping up the pressure on the junta in Niger, very much signaling that ECOWAS is willing to take military action if needed to reinstore what they call democracy in Niger”.
Click on the video below to watch the full report.
02:57
© france24
Key developments from Thursday, August 10:
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, chair of West African regional bloc ECOWAS, said on Thursday at the close of a summit on the coup in Niger that “no option had been taken off the table”, including the use of force as a last resort. The bloc ordered the activation of a standby force for possible use against the junta in Niger. The summit took place as Niger’s coup leaders announced they had formed a new government.
Read yesterday’s live blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
