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Over 271 protesters have been killed in West and Central Africa since 2014, Amnesty International says.
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The organisation disclosed this in a statement issued on Tuesday.
In November 2016, it alleged that about 150 pro-Biafra protesters were killed by the Nigeria military in the south-east.
It said human rights defenders, journalists and protesters in West and Central Africa were facing ever-higher levels of persecution, intimidation and violence.
It announced the launch of a new global campaign demanding an end to the onslaught of attacks against brave individuals standing up to injustice.
According to the human rights watchdog, “the ‘Brave’ campaign calls on states in the region to recognise the legitimacy of human rights defenders by respecting their work, giving space for it and protecting them from threats.”
“States across the region have deployed a broad and increasingly inventive range of tactics to stop people standing up against injustice and to coerce them into self-censorship,” Alioune Tine, the organisation’s regional director for West and Central Africa, said.
“By removing the right to protest, placing activists under surveillance, and intimidating them with threats and physical attacks, many governments are carrying out a full-frontal assault on human rights defenders.”
In the statement, Amnesty International said it had documented the mounting danger faced by those defending human rights in the region.
It said that the combination of mass surveillance, new technology, the misuse of laws and crackdowns on peaceful protests was exposing human rights defenders to dangerously high levels of risk.
“In almost every country in West and Central Africa, people participating in peaceful protests have been repressed through the banning of demonstrations or by the use of the unnecessary or excessive force against protesters,” it said.
“Since January 2014, Amnesty International has documented 271 protesters killed – one every five days – and thousands more injured during protests across the region, although the true number is likely to be higher. The overwhelming majority of these killings and injuries were committed by the security forces who used teargas, batons and live ammunition to disperse protesters or armored vehicles to ram their way through the crowds, even when protests were peaceful. There is rarely, if ever, accountability for such heavy-handed repression.”
The human rights watchdog also said that there had been 87 arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders in the region since 2014.
“Since January 2014 Amnesty International has documented the arbitrary arrest of at least 87 human rights defenders in West and Central Africa,” it said.
“In 2016 alone, 13 anti-slavery activists in Mauritania were brought before court on trumped up charges and sentenced to between three and 15 years in prison. In November last year, an
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