A lawyer in Niger faces prosecution over comments about the army on social media while a prominent journalist and critic of the country’s military junta is being held in secret, with authorities refusing to identify his alleged offense. These cases together highlight a broadening crackdown in Niger, where the space for free expression is shrinking by the day.
On September 21, police summoned Abrourahamane Lirwana, a well-known lawyer. A prosecutor in Niger’s capital, Niamey, charged him with “spreading data likely to disturb public order” under a broad cybercrime law and ordered him detained. Authorities have not explained the basis for the charge, though it appears linked to a September 12 Facebook post in which Lirwana described Niger’s army as divided, with some officers backing former President Mahamadou Issoufou and others former President Mohamed Bazoum. At an October 6 court hearing, prosecutors sought a five-year prison sentence for Lirwana.
Meanwhile, Moussa Kaka, a journalist, went missing in Niamey on August 31, raising fears he had been forcibly disappeared. His family and colleagues received no information about his whereabouts until September 25, when Justice Minister Alio Daouda said during Niger’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations in Geneva that Kaka had been detained for an alleged “offense” and would “answer before the courts.”
A Nigerien journalist told Human Rights Watch that Kaka “should never have been arrested, and authorities must now reveal where he is.”
Lirwana and Kaka are hardly alone. The junta continues to arbitrarily detain former President Bazoum, his wife, the former Interior Minister Hama Amadou Souley, and Moussa Tiangari, a leading human rights defender.
Since taking power in 2023, Niger’s military junta has entrenched authoritarian rule and curtailed fundamental rights and freedoms. The authorities have dissolved all political parties and several independent unions, suspended civil society groups, detained journalists under the cybercrime law, and stripped exiled opposition figures of their nationality.
Niger’s authorities should drop the politically motivated charges against Lirwana and release him. They should immediately disclose where Kaka is being held and release him or promptly charge him with a recognizable criminal offense. Niger’s authorities should respect fundamental freedoms and ensure political opponents, journalists, and civil society activists can operate safely and freely.
