Amnesty International warns that dozens of protesters, including 29 minors, have been charged with treason and could be sentenced to death. They were arrested in August and remain in prison.
Seventy-six protesters, including 29 minors, were charged with treason and face the death penalty after being arrested in August during protests against the high cost of living in Nigeria.
“The Government of the President [nigeriano]Tinubu ball, These minors have been detained since August due to protests against hunger and corruption, without access to legal assistance or family members. Due to the terrible conditions of detention, many of them require urgent medical attention,” Amnesty International (AI) said in a statement on Friday.
The non-governmental human rights organization said four of the detained youths fainted during the hearing, in a federal court in the capital, Abuja, “underscoring their poor physical and mental health.”
Illegally detaining minors and subjecting them to sham trials is a new dimension to the Nigerian government’s persistent attacks on human rights,” AI said.
The 76 protesters were charged with ten crimes, including treason, destruction of property, disorderly conduct and rioting, according to the charge sheet accessed by the Associated Press (AP) news agency, which indicates that the minors They are between 14 and 17 years old. All defendants pleaded not guilty to charges of treason or inciting a riot.
The death penalty was introduced in Nigeria in the 1970s, but since 2016 there have been no executions in the country.
Akintayo Balogun, an Abuja-based lawyer, said the Child Rights Act does not allow any minor to be subjected to criminal proceedings and sentenced to death.
“Therefore, taking minors to a higher federal court is wrong, ‘ab initio,’ unless the government can prove that all the children are over 19 years old,” Balogun told the AP.
The court ended up granting bail of 10 million naira (5,422 euros) to each of the accused and imposed strict conditions that have not yet been met, said Marshal Abubakar, a lawyer for some of the boys.
“A country that has the duty to educate its children decides to punish them. These children have been detained for 90 days without food,” Abubakar said.
In early September, the Nigerian Prosecutor’s Office charged ten more protesters with treason and destabilization of the country, in trials described by AI as “bizarre and endless attempts to deprive people of the right to peacefully protest.”
On the first day of protests alone, at the beginning of August, at least 21 people died, according to what the United Civil Society Action Front, one of the groups that led the marches, told the EFE agency at the time, while AI estimated at 13 the number of deaths.
Days after the demonstrations began, the president pledged to resolve young people’s concerns, saying that some controversial measures he had taken since coming to power in May 2023 – such as the elimination of fuel subsidies – were necessary to “save the economy.”
However, the cost of living in Nigeria has only risen during Tinubu’s tenure, with inflation hitting an all-time high of 33.95% in June, driving up prices of staples such as rice, maize and yam, making them unaffordable for many Nigerians. .
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with more than 213 million inhabitants, and one of the main oil producers, as well as one of the largest economies, on the continent.
However, four in ten Nigerians live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.
Source: Observadora
