Residents of Goundam near the northern Malian city of Timbuktu yesterday protested against the meting out of strict Islamic justice by jihadists controlling their region, witnesses said.
“It began yesterday (Thursday) when a man accused of adultery was whipped by the Islamists. He denied it and dozens of people protested,” said a resident of the town by telephone.
“Today it was a woman who was not veiled who was brutalised. Her baby fell and the population came out to say no to the Islamists.”
A nurse in the town’s health centre said: “The baby which fell is hovering between life and death.”
A municipal worker in the town, which is 90 kilometres from Timbuktu, said the population had surrounded the local mosque to “prevent the Islamists from carrying out their Friday prayers.”
Several residents reported the Islamists had fired shots in the air in an attempt to disperse the crowd but did not dissuade the protesters. The Islamists then retreated to the residence of a local official.
Meanwhile gunmen abducted the director of a Malian private newspaper from his office and beat him “to a pulp” before releasing him, a colleague said yesterday.
Saouti Haidara is now in hospital with serious injuries, another colleague said.
“Several armed men came on Thursday to the newspaper’s offices,” said a journalist with L’Independant newspaper, who asked not to be named. They fired their weapons into the air before abducting Saouti Haidara, the source added.
“Saouti was threatened in front of us while he was giving instructions to the printer about the (next day’s) newspaper,” he added.
A few hours later Haidara was released but according to the journalist “he has been beaten, tortured, by the armed men.
Makan Kone, president of the Bamako Press House visited him in hospital.
“He is in a serious condition, the armed men broke his right arm which is in plaster. He was also hit in the head and is in a very bad state,” he said.
“They threatened to kill him if he laid charges,” Mr Kone said. He condemned “attacks on freedom of expression” and a “deliberate operation of retaliation against the Malian press which is only doing its job.
“These people want to kill democracy and we will organise a march and observe a day of no press,” he added, without giving further details.
State intelligence agents briefly arrested Haidara in June. Several other journalists have been attacked or held briefly since Mali was plunged into crisis by a March 22 coup.