Togo

A month to the day after Togo’s disputed presidential election, murder, rape and kidnappings by the security forces are continuing to drive people across the borders in search of shelter, refugees and human rights leaders said on Tuesday. “There have been several hundred victims,” Sidiki Kaba, the president of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said in an interview on Radio France Internationale. “A man-hunt is on that takes place at nights.”

Talks on forming a government of national unity between newly elected President Faure Gnassingbe and Togo's main opposition parties have ended without agreement, but the failure of these negotiations caused little surprise on the streets of the capital Lome on Friday. Gnassingbe held talks with exiled opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio and other prominent opposition figures in the Nigerian capital Abuja last Thursday.

With the outflow of Togolese fleeing disputes over presidential elections slowing significantly, the United Nations refugee and food distribution agencies are making sure that host families in neighbouring Benin and Ghana can bear the burden of the nearly 31,000 refugees they have taken in.

The Togolese League of Human Rights said on Friday that 790 people had been killed and 4,345 hurt in political violence triggered by the recent election of Faure Gnassingbe to succeed his father as president of the West African nation. “The international community must hold an inquiry given the scale of the human rights violations,” Ayayi Apedo-Amah, the secretary-general of the organisation, told IRIN.

The main opposition parties in Togo have agreed to meet President Faure Gnassingbe at a reconciliation summit in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday to discuss their possible participation in a government of national unity. Yaovi Agboyibo, the coordinator of the six-party alliance, which opposed Gnassingbe in last month's presidential elections, confirmed in a statement on Saturday that opposition leaders would attend the Abuja meeting, convened by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the...read more

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