A group of young people on Monday (February 20th) brutally interrupted the conference of public figures in Bamako who announced the launch of a new critical movement against the colonels in power in Mali, reported social networks and witnesses.
Videos posted on social networks show the group of a few dozen young people entering the Press House and covering the speeches with a deafening din of slogans and horns. Shortly after, chairs flew from side to side in a great scramble and the windows of the Maison de la presse were smashed as the group left.
The young people hold up a banner proclaiming "the Malian people no longer follow a manipulator" and apparently aimed at one of the initiators of the conference, Issa Kaou N'Djim. The instigators of this intrusion have not been identified. Mr. N'Djim told one of the initiators of the conference, Issa Kaou N'Djim "Who [is] behind? I think this question should be put to the authorities,” he told AFP. "Nothing gets done without the discreet oversight of the authorities," he added.
Several personalities, including Issa Kaou N'Djim, launched an attempt to bring together parties and civil society organizations with still vague outlines, called "February 20 appeal to save Mali". This initiative comes in a context where the soldiers who took power by force in August 2020 hold all the levers and where any organized protest is almost reduced to silence or powerlessness.
"Physical Attacks"
The "willingness to impose silence on everyone was not enough, now it's physical attacks," N'Djim told AFP. Among the watchwords of this initiative are the respect of the electoral calendar provided for a return of civilians to power and the abandonment of the draft new Constitution.
This demand for abandonment goes directly against the plans of the junta, which has made a new constitution an essential element of its program and an argument to continue to lead the country until elections scheduled for 2024. referendum is scheduled for March on this new Constitution, but the doubt is growing as to the respect of the calendar.
Among the groups supporting Monday's appeal is the Coordination of Movements, Associations and Supporters of Imam Mahmoud Dicko (CMAS). The faithful of this influential cleric had suffered tear gas from the security forces in January, on his return from Saudi Arabia. The imam had been the tutelary figure in 2020 of the mobilization against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, re-elected two years earlier and finally overthrown by the military.
Mr. N'Djim, another leader of this mobilization, initially a supporter of Colonel Assimi Goïta, the leader of the junta, distanced himself from the soldiers. He had been arrested in October 2021 for "subversive remarks", "disturbing public order and undermining the credit of the State" and sentenced the following December to six months in prison, suspended.
Mr. N'Djim has recently begun to break his silence. "The only thing that I agree on to help the transition [the current political process] and avoid that we enter another crisis, is to help Assimi to make the elections and that he returns to the barracks,” he recently told private television.
