A Lawyers’ Strike in Chad

It’s been a while (.pdf, p. 13) since I’ve written about the periodic waves of strikes by professionals and students in Chad. Here is a recent strike worth noting (French):

On Thursday, 31 May, Chadian lawyers, bailiffs, and notaries joined magistrates in a country-wide strike in order to support a lawyer who was taken to task by security forces…The magistrates decided on the “cessation of all activities throughout the national territory” to protest against the aggression against a lawyer and his clients by the security forces on 22 May in Doba.

RFI (French) provides more details on the incident in Doba:

The Chadian judicial system is today paralyzed by an affair that has shaken it since 22 May. That Tuesday, in Doba, in the south of the country, the justice system released three men accused by the city’s highest political and military authorities of “complicity in associating with wrongdoers” linked with a murky affair of alleged arms possession. Except that the men were then attacked by gendarmes, arrested and beaten up publicly. The affair has since taken on a national dimension…Meeting in general assembly that Sunday, the Order of Lawyers decided to launch a strike in the tribunals for three days, together with a condition: that three high authorities of the oil town of Doba, including the governor and the head of the legion of the gendarmerie, be relieved of their functions and judged.

At least one source (French) reports that the governor has been sacked by presidential decree. If true, that would be a sign of the presidency’s real concern over these strikes. After all, these judicial personnel are highly educated and well-placed people making extremely serious and specific political demands. It’s not easy to ignore them.