How Togolese people are reinventing political protest amid civil society crackdown

Filed 2h ago · Via Global Voices · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Togo's 2024 constitutional overhaul quietly moved power from a directly elected president to an unelected-by-the-public Council presidency, a post Faure Gnassingbé has held since May 2025 after two decades already in charge. The June 2025 protests that followed, sparked by the arrest of rapper Aamron, were met with police violence that killed at least seven and led to over 140 arrests.

Since then, authorities have widened the net: a former defense minister and Aamron himself were both later arrested on rebellion-incitement charges, a nationwide internet shutdown throttled Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube for weeks, and a November decree extended prosecution to simple online interactions like liking a post. Rights advocates describe a civic space narrowing so quietly it leaves little trace, pushing organizers like the leaderless M66 collective into legal limbo and driving activists such as Rodrigue Ahégo into exile.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government that has to make liking a post a criminal act is not exactly projecting confidence in its own popularity. When speaking up costs you your freedom and staying quiet costs you your voice, the deck was rigged before anyone typed a word. That kind of quiet is not peace, it is just fear with better manners.

Source: Read the original at Global Voices → Scored: Blue Feather · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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