18 March 2009

Dakar - Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade on Wednesday pardoned 19 people convicted of crimes connected with bloody riots in the gold-mining town of Kedougou last December, an official statement said.

The presidential pardon, given mainly to youths and former soldiers who had been jailed for between five and 10 years, was announced a day ahead of a visit by Wade to Kedougou, where he is due to inaugurate a gold mine by symbolically receiving the first ingot.

Many young people in Kedougou, about 700km south-east of Dakar, rioted on December 23 to protest over poverty and their living standards as well as the distribution of jobs in a potentially rich part of the west African country.

Two people were killed and 35 injured, according to the official toll from the serious violence that broke out. Several public buildings were damaged and looted by mobs and arson attacks took place.

A rights group, the Dakar-based Raddho, put the number of dead at three, with six people seriously injured.

Some of those sentenced to long jail terms were school pupils caught up in the wave of violence, which led to charges and convictions of "participating in an armed movement, damage and plotting against state security, arson and the degradation of public buildings."

Wade is touring the country ahead of local government elections on Sunday.

Senegal bows to hawkers' demands after riots

In November Senegal temporarily backed off its earlier ban on street vending, allowing hawkers to return to business a day after violent riots rocked the West African country's capital.

A town hall official said the city's mayor Pape Diop "has authorised the hawkers to go back to their selling points along the public roads, but without obstructing traffic".

The concession is to last until the end of December when the predominantly Muslim country celebrates Eid-ul-Adha, the Islamic festival, due this year on December 20.

The decision was reached in emergency talks between the vendors' representatives and the mayoral office on Thursday.

On Wednesday hundreds of vendors rampaged across the city burning cars and old tyres, bringing the bustling capital to a standstill in a show of growing discontent over high unemployment and a soaring cost of living.

Police fired tear gas to break up those riots and a separate protest march that was about to be staged by labour unions seeking pay hikes.

The 209 people who were arrested in connection with Wednesday's disorder have all been freed without charge, police said.

President Abdoulaye Wade, in office since 2000, last week ordered the eviction of the street vendors who had set up shop on pavements across the oceanside city, saying they were disrupting the formal business sector.

The president said uncontrolled street vending had cost the country millions of euros due to disorder and congestion that were putting off investors.

But the move sparked what local media described as the most violent protests in Senegal since the late 1980s, according to the privately owned newspaper Sud Quotidien.

Senegal, still ranked among the most stable countries in Africa, was hit in 1988-89 by popular protests against the former socialist government of Abdou Diouf.

On Thursday sporadic incidents of violence broke out again in parts of the capital but were quickly put down, and later the city remained calm though tense as some shop-owners kept their shutters down.

"The situation is calm and under control," one police officer said.

Local media said the unrest was an expression of disillusionment by the majority of Senegalese hard pressed for the most basic needs, while the country invests in new highways and five-star hotels ahead of a major summit of Islamic nations it is set to host in March.

The annual rate of inflation which averaged around two percent in 2006 is officially at six percent this year.

The World Bank said in a recent study that 95 percent of workers in Senegal are in the informal sector and that nearly 30 percent of the country's employable population have no jobs.

Other estimates however put the unemployment rate at 40 percent in Africa's westernmost country of 11.7 million people whose main sources of livelihood are fishing and agriculture.

The country tops the list of nations from which illegal African migrants try to make it to Europe in rickety boats across the Atlantic Ocean in search of jobs.