The NGO VIE Kande Ni Bayra (Volunteers for Educational Integration) in Niger runs alternative educational programmes for the most disadvantaged communities in one of the poorest countries in the world. Young people, who, because of their age can no longer enrol in school are provided with instruction until they catch up with their peers.
Women and men are taught to read and write, and participate in a network of exchanges in which they develop the skills for analytical thinking and expression, allowing them to deal with their concerns.
The group predominantly works with UN agencies (FAO, UNFPA and UNICEF) and cooperation agencies.
In Niger today, any denunciation that calls upon the responsibility of the regime is systematically labelled as a destabilising act plotted by the opposition. This serves to silence civil society including the unions.
I fell into the sights of the regime, or shall we say of certain officious persons making use of their position, when I announced that the famine was taking its toll on the performance of children at school. I backed up the announcement with examples of cases reported by the teachers including for example that of a child whose father told him at lunchtime to get a particular kind of clay from the bottom of the well, in order to soothe his hunger whilst the family searched for something else for him to eat.
This simple announcement in the media led to me being detained arbitrarily for 38 days by the State General Security Service.
The regional governor presented the situation as an insult orchestrated by opponents of the regime. He organised false depictions in the media followed by a destructive smear campaign to traumatise my relatives and colleagues. One civil society organisation was even pushed into disseminating the false version at an international level.
Front Line Defenders wrote directly to the President of the Republic and this was relayed by the local media and very actively on the internet. Their intervention helped to calm the situation considerably.
Despite this, the persecution continued. My wife and I were subjected to a series of hearings by the judicial police and humiliating tests at the official maternity facilities, in order to prove that our twins, who had been born at these facilities in Niger, were not babies that had been bought in Nigeria.
Faced with this harassment, I resisted by adopting the stance cited by HASSAN II, which says, 'do not waste your time putting forward arguments in good faith to those who are of bad faith'.
In spite of maintaining our version of events, 17 months later, the Interior Minister lifted the suspension and five days later handed down a new, more serious sanction, for 'actions compromising the public order' because we had written that he did not deserve to be thanked after all the harm he had caused.
In Niger today, any denunciation that calls upon the responsibility of the regime is systematically labelled as a destabilising act plotted by the opposition. This serves to silence civil society including the unions.
