One dead, 30 injured in new wave of unrest in Senegal

Protesters have taken to the streets in capital Dakar against what they call an increasingly repressive state.

Violence during protests in the Ngor neighbourhood of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, has killed one teenager and wounded 30 people as young protesters took to the streets against an increasingly “repressive state”.

The city witnessed violent protests on Tuesday night when schoolchildren demanding a high school to be built instead of a police station were confronted by police in full gear.

“The government is not listening to us, the president is not listening to us, no one wants to help us, so we are expressing ourselves as we can,” a protester who did not want to give his full name told Al Jazeera.

Checkpoints and security officers were placed to prevent other residents and journalists from entering Ngor. Al Jazeera correspondent Nicolas Haque was harassed and stopped for a few hours before he could resume reporting.

“We have to maintain operations to keep law and order to protect the population,” said Senegal’s government spokesperson Abdou Karim Fofan. “People should be able to demonstrate but people should also be able to go to work and to schools without being stopped by demonstrations,” Fofan said.

But residents of Ngor said police stormed their homes while they were sleeping to arrest and beat dozens of people, Haque reported after he could manage to enter the neighbourhood.

“This is not a political protest, and what is happening is incomprehensible to us we don’t understand. All we want is a high school, not a police station,” Souley Mbengue, deputy mayor of Ngor, told Al Jazeera.

The protest happened hours after a call by Senegalese opposition figure Ousmane Sonko for civil disobedience by his supporters following a court ruling that threatens his candidacy in upcoming presidential elections.

A court on Monday suspended Sonko’s sentence in a libel case that could make the popular politician ineligible to stand in the 2024 presidential vote – the latest twist in a long-running legal saga that has stoked further tensions in Dakar, already shaken by days of unrest.

Sonko rejected the court ruling, pledging instead to pursue his candidacy and calling for a mass protest against President Macky Sall.

Senegal’s constitution allows only two presidential terms, but some fear Sall will use a recent tweak to the constitution to reset his mandate, which ends in 2024, allowing him to run again.

“Nobody can prevent me from being a candidate,” Sonko said in a speech streamed online on Tuesday. “What happened yesterday is not a travesty of justice but judicial banditry.”

“I repeat my call for resistance and ask the Senegalese to stand up and face Macky Sall,” he said.

The authorities have rejected Sonko’s allegations that the justice system is being used to shut him out of the presidential race. The tense standoff has triggered protests and sometimes violent clashes between security forces and his supporters in recent years.

Sonko did not say if he planned to appeal the court ruling at the Supreme Court within the six-day deadline, but called on supporters to attend an opposition rally scheduled for Friday in Dakar.

“We want the 12th [of May] to be a protest like nothing the country has ever seen,” he said.

Friday’s rally is being organised by the F24 platform, a large group of civil society organisations. Members wish to show their opposition to a third term by Sall and allege that the authorities have misused the justice system for political ends.

Aside from the libel case, Sonko is also charged with raping a beauty salon employee in 2021 and making death threats against her. He denies any wrongdoing, but the outcome of that case could also affect his electoral eligibility. The next court hearing is scheduled for May 16.

Tuesday’s deadly demonstration and Sonko’s call for protests on Friday have further heightened tensions and poked holes in the longstanding image of a country largely viewed as one of the most stable democracies in West Africa.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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UK court rules in favour of Shell in Nigerian oil spill case

 The case is one of a series of legal battles Shell has been fighting in London courts, mounted by residents of Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta.

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled that it was too late for a group of Nigerian claimants to sue two Shell subsidiaries over a 2011 offshore oil spill.

On December 20, 2011, an estimated 40,000 barrels of crude oil leaked when a tanker was loaded at Shell’s Bonga oilfield, 120km (75 miles) off the coast of Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

Shell disputed the allegations and said the Bonga spill was dispersed offshore and did not impact the shoreline.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld rulings by two lower courts that found the plaintiffs had brought their case after the six-year legal expiry date.

Spilled crude oil laps at the shores of the Niger Delta in the village of Bodo in Nigeria’s oil-producing Ogoniland 

A panel of five Supreme Court justices unanimously rejected the claimants’ argument that the ongoing consequences of the pollution represented a “continuing nuisance”.

According to the Reuters news agency, the court did not look at the evidence supporting either side’s assertions or make a ruling on the issue. It only decided the legal point of nuisance.

“The Supreme Court rejects the claimants’ submission. There was no continuing nuisance in this case,” Justice Andrew Burrows said as he delivered the ruling.

“The leak was a one-off event or an isolated escape. The oil pipe was no longer leaking after six hours,” he said.

A group of 27,800 people and 457 communities living in the delta have been trying to sue Shell, saying the leftover oil slick polluted their lands and waterways and damaged farming, fishing, drinking water, mangrove forests and religious shrines.

The average life expectancy in the region is 41 years, 10 years lower than the national average.

UK courts have previously ruled against Shell in another case involving pollution in the Niger Delta.

Chief Fidelis Oguru, left, and Friday Alfred Akpan, representatives of fishermen and farmers from Nigeria, attend a court hearing in The Hague on October 11, 2012, after taking Shell to court, accusing the company of polluting their lands and waters 

In February 2021, the Supreme Court allowed a group from the Ogale and Bille communities to sue Shell over spills, and that case is currently through the High Court.

At that time, Shell said it was not responsible for most of those spills and said they were caused by illegal third-party interference.

“We believe litigation does little to address the real problem in the Niger Delta: oil spills due to crude oil theft, illegal reining and sabotage, with which SPDC [Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary] is constantly faced and which cause the most environmental damage,” a Shell spokesperson said.

In a separate case in 2015, Shell agreed to pay 55 million pounds ($70m) to the delta’s Bodo community in compensation for two spills after a legal battle in London.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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UK tabloid publisher apologises in Prince Harry trial

Harry is one of several high-profile claimants bringing damages against Mirror Group Newspapers over allegations of unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking.

The publisher of United Kingdom tabloid The Mirror, accused by Britain’s Prince Harry and other celebrities of unlawful information gathering, has apologised at the opening of a trial in London.

Harry has been involved in several legal cases against British newspaper publishers since moving to California in the United States and stepping down from royal duties in early 2020.

He is one of several high-profile claimants bringing damages against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over allegations of unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking. The group publishes titles including The Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

At the start of the trial on Wednesday, the publisher admitted “some evidence” of unlawful information gathering and assured that “such conduct will never be repeated”.

The group admitted that a private investigator was instructed by a journalist at The People to unlawfully gather information about Harry’s activities at a London nightclub one night in 2004. It apologised to Harry “unreservedly” and said he was entitled to “appropriate compensation” without providing further details.

But MGN lawyer Andrew Green said voicemail interception was denied. He also argued that some of the claims were brought too late, with some of the stories in question dating back more than 20 years.

Lawyer David Sherborne, representing Harry and other claimants, submitted that the use of unlawful information gathering by journalists from the titles of MGN was happening “at an industrial scale”.

Harry, who was not present for the start of the hearing, has been selected as one of four test cases for the seven-week trial and is due to give evidence himself in person in early June, the first British royal to do so since the 19th century, according to local media.

“Prince or not, the blatantly unlawful and illegal methods that were used by the defendant to get every piece of information about his life away from royal duties was quite frankly appalling,” Sherborne told the court on Wednesday. “No one should have been subjected to that.”

“It was a flood of illegality,” Sherborne said, adding that “this flood was being authorised and approved of by senior executives”.

Harry, 38, has had a difficult relationship with the media, particularly since he and his wife Meghan Markle, who is American, left the royal family in early 2020.

He is also pursuing claims against two other media companies, the publisher of The Sun and, separately, the publisher of the Daily Mail. Those cases will be decided later this year.

Harry holds the media responsible for the death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 after being pursued by paparazzi photographers.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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