RFK Human Rights submitted a petition to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) on behalf of Ouro-Gouni Motala, a Togolese metalsmith who was arbitrarily detained in a discriminatory wave of arrests by the Togolese authorities targeting members of the Kotokoli ethnic group. 

Mr. Ouro-Gouni was first arrested in late 2019 in the midst of a protracted political and social crisis in Togo. Starting in 2017, a coalition of opposition parties organized mass peaceful demonstrations against the five-decade rule of the Gnassingbé dynasty. Hundreds of thousands of Togolese joined the protests to condemn the government’s repression and call for better representation. One of the political parties in the coalition, the Pan-African National Party, is associated with the Kotokoli ethnic group. In response, the government resorted to mass arrests and arbitrary detention, targeting those who belonged to the Kotokoli ethnic group.

Mr. Ouro-Gouni was one of the Kotokoli people arbitrarily detained by the government as part of the mass arrests that followed the protests. Although Mr. Ouro-Gouni never joined a political party or engaged in any demonstrations, police officers arrived at his workplace in the city of Sokodé in central Togo and forcefully handcuffed and arrested him without producing a warrant. They took him to his home and confiscated many of his personal belongings before detaining him at the infamous Lomé Civil Prison. Mr. Ouro-Gouni remained in arbitrary detention for two years before being brought to Lomé Court of First Instance. During his court appearance, the Judge questioned him about the protests and some political activities. To date, more than four years after he was arrested in 2019, Mr. Ouro-Gouni has not received a charge sheet and has not been formally arraigned. 

“Mr. Ouro-Gouni has been unjustly detained for more than four years, during which his last child was born and his wife sadly died,” said Ikechukwu Uzoma, staff attorney at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “We urge the UNWGAD to urgently determine the petition and strongly call on the government of Togo to release him immediately and accord him the right to compensation,” he added.

The petition submitted to the UNWGAD establishes that there is no legal basis for Togolese authorities to detain Mr. Ouro-Gouni and that his fair trial rights have been violated. It also demonstrates that Mr.Ouro-Gouni was targeted on the basis of his ethnicity, and supposedly in reprisal for the exercise of his fundamental rights of association and expression based on the discriminatory linkage between all Kotokoli individuals and the political opposition.

Human rights and civic space have continued to deteriorate in Togo as the government repressed opposition to the controversial constitutional amendment adopted last year. The amendment transferred executive power to the new position of President of the Council of Ministers, which is not subject to term limits. This leaves a path for President Faure Gnassingbé to indefinitely continue his family’s 58-year rule in Togo, without any direct input from Togolese citizens.