“Lomé is burning”
Reuters spoke to Olympio:
“Lome is burning,” main opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio told Reuters by telephone from Ghana, where he lives in exile. “But the only solution is to come to a political settlement … otherwise we are going right into the abyss.”
Reuters – Apr 26, 2005
Shortly after the RPT announced its victory, “the sky over Lomé was black from the smoke of tires” according to the BBC’s correspondent Elizabeth Blunt.
LeTogolais reports that shortly before the announcement, the military was deployed across the city. The heavily armed soldiers apparently took any excuse to shoot at civilians and brutalize protesters.
« Nous les avons vus arriver par camions entiers et se mettre en place peu avant que les résultats des élections soient annoncés » raconte Laurent AKPOVI, enseignant à Lomé et résident à Nyékonakpoè, un des fiefs de l’opposition dans la capitale togolaise. Lourdement armés et massivement positionnés aux points stratégiques du quartier, les groupes de militaire n’ont pas hésité à tirer à balles réelles aussi bien sur les passants que sur les poches de manifestants qui commençaient par se constituer dès l’annonce des résultats.
LeTogolais – 26/04/2005
Faure, I guess your daddy would be proud of you.
April 26th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
We are all very upset with the new electoral hold-up that just took place in Togo. The violence that followed is not close to an end but is at its beginning. France and Ecowas are approving this. I don’t know if the French president Chirac and Ecowas think that Togolese people don’t have the right to freedom and the right to choose their own president. Having lived in Togo and attended the University of Lome where we had to deal with the soldiers on the campus all the time to get our scholarships paid and better conditions and with the great thirst for freedom that we have in Togo this is absolutely not right and I can promise the violence is just at its begining in Togo. Just like oher people in Madagascar, in Ukraine, in Mali, and in other places fought for their freedom, we young people, even if older people flee, we’re going to get our freedom by all means!
Agbe
April 26th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
[…] ean please… Anyway: naturally it’s chaos now and surprise surprise the winners predicted it (you might want to check the rest of the blog, it’s very good). Also in today’s bad news: […]