NOUAKCHOTT - Police fired tear gas and used batons to beat back union activists demanding the reinstatement of Mauritania’s deposed president.
Four of the country’s unions went ahead with the unauthorized march Tuesday, violating the ruling junta’s ban on demonstrations yesterday, the governor of Nouakchott Mohamed Lemine Ould Moulaye reiterated that all marches in public streets have been temporarily suspended.
Union leaders said they were willing to brave police brutality in order to protest the Aug. 6 coup, which saw the country’s first democratically elected president in more than two decades put under house arrest and a military junta instated.
“We wanted to show that their refusal to authorize our marches will not stop us from marching,” said Samory Ould Beye, secretary general of the Free Confederation of Mauritanian Workers, known by its French acronym of CLTM.
Dr. Mohamed Ould Sidi at the main hospital in Nouakchott said on Wednesday that he treated two injured protesters. Both suffered only minor injuries, he said.
Tensions have been rising over the military’s takeover two months ago, a coup that toppled President Sidi Cheikh Ould Abdallahi who won what international observers called the country’s first free and fair election in over 20 years.
The junta accused Abdallahi of corruption and of being soft on Islamic hardliners, accusations the president’s supporters say are bogus and are intended to drum up Western support for the coup.
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