In Niger, political tensions are still high as the country awaits the Supreme Court ruling on the validity of the preliminary results of the presidential election. Last week, prosecutors announced that about 350 people would be prosecuted for their role in the violence in the post-election crisis. According to their lawyers, some of these people were arrested for data disseminated on social networks. The Internet had been suspended for ten days after the announcement of the preliminary results. And despite the return of the connection, some Nigerians remain discreet on social networks because they fear falling under the law against cybercrime.
With our Special Correspondent in Niamey, Gaelle Laleix
At the back of a cafe, a small group of young people are discussing. This student says she is addicted to social networks, but since internet recovery, she expresses sparingly …
“I do not say what I think clearly, especially when it comes to politics. If it does not come over to the authorities, we can look for you. Because of that, I now prefer to keep quiet. ”
Article 31 of the Law against Cybercrime states that “dissemination through electronic means of communication of data that may disturb public order may be punished by imprisonment”. For Maître Moustapha Hamidou, president of the Association of Young Lawyers in Niger, this article leaves too much room for interpretation with the risk of being liberal: “Instead of being a sanction law, it is a preventive law. Because the purpose of the law is not to sanction acts that disrupt public order. None! We say “by nature”, so we go into probabilities. Could the act committed have such and such a consequence? “
For Siraji Issa, president of the Youth Movement for the Emergence of Niger, a civil society association, it is necessary to oversee social networks. “Through social networks, people make ethnocentric comments and spread hatred and misinformation. There are limits to everything: for there to be a nation that respects itself, there must be laws that are also respected. ”
Contacted by RFI, the Ministry of Justice did not respond to our request.
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