(N’Djamena) Chad’s National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) estimates that the toll of the bloody repression in October of opposition demonstrations against the extension of the transition is 128 dead, in a report sent Thursday to the AFP.
On October 20, 2022, opposition demonstrations against the maintenance in power for two additional years of the transitional president, General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, were bloodily repressed in N’Djamena, the capital, and in other other cities in the country.
The authorities had first announced that around fifty people had died, mainly young people shot dead in the capital by the police, before reassessing this toll at 73 dead. NGOs, however, denounced undervalued figures.
“Official figures […] are different from those obtained after the investigations of the National Commission for Human Rights”, indicates the CNDH, which specifies that its work has “mainly concerned the cities most affected by repression, in particular those of N’Djamena, Moundou , Doba, Koumra and Sarh”.
According to investigators, 943 people were arrested, 435 detained, and 12 missing. The CNDH “attributes the main responsibility for all these human rights violations to agents vested with the authority of the State, namely the FDS [forces de sécurité]who clearly failed in their duties in the chain of events,” the report noted.
During this “Black Thursday”, 621 people, according to the government, were arrested and then taken to Koro Toro, a high security prison in the middle of the desert 600 km north of N’Djamena. They were then tried in a mass trial, without lawyers or independent media, after a month and a half of detention.
“Four dead bodies arrived in Koro-Toro, died en route and eight died from ill-treatment” in this prison, indicates the CNDH.
The CNDH, created in 2019, has the mission of protecting and promoting human rights and transmits opinions to the government, the President of the Republic and the National Assembly.