The collective of Republican lawyers led by Me El Hadji Amadou Sall issued a press release to denounce with regret the “regression of human rights and freedom of expression in Senegal”. These lawyers note that “for some time” “arbitrary arrests” have been increasing. Worse, they inform that “individual freedoms are violated, free expression, guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws is seriously threatened”.
Mr. Sall and his comrades report that: “In addition to attempts to gag the private, independent and free press, we are witnessing the deportation from the airport of Senegalese citizens whose only crime is to have belonged to the outgoing regime.”
According to the black robes, “These systematic bans on leaving the country constitute an illegal and unjust measure and are clearly an attack on the fundamental freedom to come and go, the mother of all freedoms.”
These lawyers are of the opinion that this measure “of extreme gravity, ordered by the government and implemented, indiscriminately, by the border police is a flagrant violation of the rights of these citizens against whom, to date, no legal proceedings have been initiated and consequently are not subject to any judicial measure of exclusion from territory”.
Faced with what they consider to be “anti-democratic, despotic and arbitrary measures without legal basis”, the “republican lawyers” intend to immediately initiate “legal and judicial actions necessary to put an end to these totalitarian practices from another age, unjust and dangerous which embody, unfortunately, the symbol of a state of law that is being mistreated and in agony”.
