Alicia Keys, Greta Thunberg and others urge Nigeria to free protesters

The letter requested Buhari to launch jailed protesters and journalists and to return confiscated passports and authorities IDs and to unfreeze financial institution accounts.

“In the midst of a global pandemic, your people sought to bring peace and justice to their land, and they made Africa and its diaspora proud in doing so,” learn the letter, which was revealed as an commercial in The New York Times on Thursday to coincide with International Human Rights Day. “Yet their peaceful requests were met with state-sanctioned violence and suppression, as your administration meted out unwarranted force against its own citizens.”

The SARS unit was arrange in 1992 to struggle armed theft and was given wide-ranging powers. Many of the officers didn’t put on uniforms or title tags and there have been quite a few complaints that they’d now turned on the residents and had been perpetrating the very crimes that they had been set as much as fight.

On October 11, Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police introduced that SARS could be dissolved and its officers redeployed.

After the protests, the central financial institution obtained a 90-day court docket order freezing the accounts of those that took half within the demonstrations, in accordance with media stories, whereas a journalist who lined the protests was arrested and detained for 5 days earlier than being freed on bail.

Fatal capturing at Lekki toll gate

A CNN investigation, corroborated by authorities CCTV footage, into a very bloody incident on the Lekki toll gate in Lagos on October 20 confirmed troopers fatally fired right into a crowd of protesters.

All army personnel discovered answerable for this incident ought to be held accountable and a “transparent” and an “independent” investigation should be performed into what occurred, the group demanded.

“As people who have supported the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and throughout the diaspora, we cannot be silent when similar atrocities take place in African countries,” the letter added, concluding that Nigerians and Africa “deserve better.”

Other notable signatories had been Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), actors Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, and author Afua Hirsch.

In the aftermath of the Lekki capturing, the military denied any involvement, describing stories of the incident as “fake news” earlier than backtracking and saying that troopers had been current and fired their weapons within the air utilizing clean and dwell rounds.

An eight-person judicial panel has been set as much as examine police brutality and what occurred on the Lekki toll gate.

On Wednesday, Buhari tweeted that the overseas press protection of the #ENDSARS protests was not balanced.

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