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Chad Opposition Crackdown Risks Return to One-Party Rule

The arrest of prominent opposition leaders and the Supreme Court's dissolution of their coalition raise serious concerns about the judicial system being weaponized as a tool of repression, writes Remadji Hoinathy, a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies. The coalition, known as the Political Actors Consultation Group (GCAP), had scheduled a major demonstration for May 2.

Hoinathy said the developments signal Chad's gradual slide back into authoritarianism. "The silencing of the GCAP leaders leaves President Mahamat Idriss Déby's ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement virtually unchallenged. Without a credible opposition, Chad's democratic project is failing," Hoinathy warned.

Beyond the "systematic banning" of protests and the judicial silencing of dissenting voices, the researcher said there is "a trend towards normalizing the use of lethal force, even in banal situations".

Présidence de la République du Tchad

President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno (file photo).

InFocus

  • 'Chad is No Longer a Country'

    A child walks in front of a health centre in Tine, Chad (file photo).

    The central African nation of Chad has entered a phase of acute structural vulnerability that puts it and the wider on a collision path with state collapse. Too long ignored by regional actors and the international community, who have wrongly interpreted prowess on the battlefield with internal stability, the question is no longer simply whether the government of President Mahamat Deby Itno is authoritarian. It is. It is whether he can hold the country together at all, writes Cameron Hudson for

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