AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

Remembrance Day on 30 May. This was
similar in pattern to the attacks and excessive
use of force in December 2015 on gatherings
in which the military slaughtered hundreds of
men, women and children in Zaria in Kaduna
state during a confrontation with members of
the Islamic Movement of Nigeria.
In South Africa, student protests resumed
in August at universities across the country
under the banner of #FeesMustFall. The
protests regularly ended in violence. While
there may have been some violence on the
students’ side, Amnesty International
documented many reports of police using
excessive force, including firing rubber
bullets at short range at students and
supporters generally. One student leader was
shot in the back 13 times with rubber bullets
on 20 October in Johannesburg.
In Zimbabwe, police continued to clamp
down on protest and strike action in Harare
using excessive force. Hundreds of people
were arrested for participating in peaceful
protests in different parts of the country,
including Pastor Evan Mawarire, leader of the
#ThisFlag campaign, who was briefly arrested
in an attempt to suppress growing dissent,
and who eventually fled the country when he
feared for his life.
In many of these protests and more,
including in Chad, Republic of the Congo
(Congo), DRC, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia,
Lesotho and Uganda, there was an
increasing crackdown on social media and
patterns of arbitrary restriction or shutting
down of access to the internet.
ATTACKS ON HUMAN RIGHTS
DEFENDERS AND JOURNALISTS
Human rights defenders and journalists were
frequently in the front line of human rights
violations, with the right to freedom of
expression suffering both steady erosions and
new waves of threats. Attempts to crush
dissent and tighten the noose around
freedom of expression manifested themselves
across the continent, including in Botswana,
Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire,
Gambia, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia,
South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and
Zambia.
Some had to pay the ultimate price. A
prominent human rights lawyer, his client
and their taxi driver were subjected to forced
disappearance and extrajudicial killing by
police in Kenya. They were among more than
177 cases of individuals extrajudicially
executed at the hands of security agencies
during the year. In Sudan, the murder of 18-
year-old Sudanese university student
Abubakar Hassan Mohamed Taha and 20-
year-old Mohamad Al Sadiq Yoyo by
intelligence agents came against a backdrop
of intensified repression of student dissent.
Two journalists were killed in Somalia by
unidentified assailants, in a climate in which
journalists and media workers were harassed,
intimidated and attacked.
Many others faced arbitrary arrests and
continued to face prosecution and detention
for their work. Despite some positive steps in
Angola – including the acquittal of human
rights defenders and release of prisoners of
conscience – politically motivated trials,
criminal defamation charges and national
security laws continued to be used to
suppress human rights defenders, dissent
and other critical voices. In DRC, youth
movements were classified as insurrectional
groups. Elsewhere, the whereabouts of
politicians and journalists arbitrarily arrested
and forcibly disappeared in Eritrea since
2001 remained unknown, despite the
government’s announcement that they were
still alive.
In Mauritania, although the Supreme Court
ordered the release of 12 anti-slavery
activists, three remained in detention and
anti-slavery organizations and activists
continued to face persecution by the
authorities.
Beyond imprisonment, human rights
defenders and journalists also faced physical
assaults, intimidation and harassment in
many countries including in Chad, Gambia,
Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan.
On 18 April, Zimbabwe’s Independence
Day, state security agents brutally assaulted
the brother of disappeared journalist and pro-
Amnesty International Report 2016/17 17