At least 19 people were killed in anti-government demonstrations in Sierra Leone on Wednesday. It concerns at least thirteen civilians and six police officers. International news agencies reported this on Thursday, based on reports from a morgue in the capital Freetown and the local police. Protesters protested what they saw as inadequate government measures to address the country’s economic problems.
The civilian casualties all occurred in the capital Freetown, the officers died in Freetown and the smaller towns of Kamakwie and Makeni. The protests mainly took place in the north and west of the West African country, where a large part of the opposition supporters live. The Sierra Leonean government shut down the internet on Wednesday and imposed a restraining order from 3 p.m. local time, both to limit escalation as much as possible. President Julius Maada Bio spoke on Twitter about an “unlucky day.”
Fuel and food prices have risen sharply in the African country in recent months. As a result, many poor households in Sierra Leone can buy even less. Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world; about half of the population of eight million lives below the poverty line. The United Nations released a report last month in which it directly links the “shocking rate in poverty and famine” worldwide to the war in Ukraine.