[ad_1]
Soldiers in Benin fired on Thursday as they cracked down on the second day of demonstrations angry at parliamentary polls held without a single opposition candidate, witnesses said.
A large number of soldiers and riot police, as well as hundreds of demonstrators armed with barricades on fire, gathered in the streets of the economic capital of Benin, Cotonou.
A witness said three people were killed Thursday as soldiers opened fire and a video seen by AFP showed soldiers firing as protesters fled.
"The police and soldiers (…) started shooting, they sued people," said one resident. "We heard gunshots, a lot of gunshots."
A woman died Thursday after being injured the day before, medical sources said. A man was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound on his back.
The protests began a few hours after Wednesday's first results revealed a record turnout in Sunday's election.
Thursday, the soldiers deployed in force.
"They made a brutal incursion," said a witness, a family member of former president Thomas Boni Yayi, who had called for a boycott of Sunday's poll and whose home became the center of events.
"They fired bursts of bullets," said the witness, who spoke of three dead among the protesters.
Interior Minister Sacca Lafia told French Radio RFI that some officers "opposed the orders given" and that the guilty parties would be sentenced to "the most severe penalties".
Despite the violence, the Constitutional Court announced that it would release the final election results on Thursday.
"Democracy is precious"
Protesters chanting slogans against President Patrice Talon burned shops, threw stones and gas bombs, and smashed the windows of government buildings.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and protesters tried to throw some of the cans.
"Talon … will not be able to kill our democracy," said a protester.
"Democracy is precious to us, Beninese people," said another. "That's why we protested."
Violence has also been reported in Kandi City, about 620 kilometers to the north.
One of the country's largest cotton factories – an area in which Talon made his fortune before going into politics – was burned down.
"The protesters set the factory on fire," said a firefighter. "Everything burned."
"Repression"
The new eligibility criteria prevented opposition parties from running in the parliamentary elections last Sunday.
Opposition leaders asked people not to vote and preliminary results showed that more than three quarters of the five million registered voters in the country had responded to the call.
According to preliminary results, only 22.99% of registered voters voted.
Before Sunday, while it was 22.99%, the turnout had not dropped below 50% since the country transitioned to democracy in 1990.
Boni Yayi and Nicephore Soglo, president from 1991 to 1996, voted against the elections.
"The people demand the return of democracy," Boni Yayi told reporters on Monday, calling on the population to resist the outgoing president. "Talon will walk on our bodies."
Events in the small state of West Africa have resulted in warnings from civil society and human rights groups in Benin and elsewhere.
Before the vote, Amnesty International said that a "wave of arbitrary arrests of political activists and journalists and the crackdown on peaceful protests" had reached an "alarming level".
Source link
