African leaders across the continent are lining up against Niger's new military regime, which refuses to budge since ousting the country's democratically elected president.
From the African Union to the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, calls for Niger's military junta to step aside are raising the potential for a regional military confrontation.
The African Union Commission's chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, said on Friday he strongly supports the Economic Community of West African States' opposition to "anti-constitutional change in Niger."
Mahamat said he was deeply concerned at the poor conditions in which Niger's ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, was being detained, and called on the coup leaders to "urgently halt" the escalation of tensions with ECOWAS, an economic bloc among 15 West African countries.
"Such treatment of a democratically elected president through a regular electoral process is unacceptable," Mahamat said in demanding the immedate release of Bazoum and all members of his family and government who are illegally detained.
"Their detention flies in the face of Nigerien law and the founding principles of the A.U. and ECOWAS," he said, adding that the entire international community must "unite efforts to save the moral and physical integrity" of Bazoum.
A day earlier, ECOWAS said after yet another emergency summit on the situation that it would mobilize a standby military force for Niger but all options remained on the table.
Its final communiqué said ECOWAS' standby force had been deployed "to restore constitutional order" in Niger, but the regional bloc was determined "to keep all options on the table for the peaceful resolution of the crisis."
The head of ECOWAS, Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu, said the economic bloc would consider “the use of force as a last resort.”
Their decision came in the wake of an Aug. 6 deadline ECOWAS set for Niger's military junta to restore Bazoum to power. The junta defiantly ignored the deadline, after scrapping military agreements with France and de-authorizing Niger's diplomats to France, the U.S., Togo and Nigeria, which hosts ECOWAS.
Chad's president, General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, has been leading ECOWAS' attempts to mediate a peaceful solution. The ECOWAS region was created under a 1975 treaty to operate as a self-sufficient trading bloc.
Bazoum and family members in danger
Niger's military junta led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani has garnered popular support by stoking anti-French sentiment against the former colonial ruler. France’s foreign ministry and U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken said their countries supported the regional bloc's attempts to peacefully restore democracy.
ECOWAS has said it considers Bazoum to be a hostage of the junta and would take all measures needed to restore constitutional order in Niger. Over the past several weeks it has repeatedly met at its headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, where West African defense chiefs were planning a potential military intervention involving several thousand troops.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told journalists he was concerned about "the deplorable living conditions that President Bazoum and his family are reported to be living under as they continue to be arbitrarily detained by members of the Presidential Guard in Niger."
Guterres called for the president's "immediate, unconditional release and his reinstatement as head of state," and said he also was alarmed at reports about the arrest of several other government members.
Human Rights Watch said on Friday it had spoken to Bazoum, who reported that his 20-year-old son has a serious heart condition but has not been granted access to a doctor.
“Nigerien coup leaders are subjecting Bazoum and his family and undisclosed others to abusive treatment in violation of international human rights law,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, the organization's deputy Africa director.
“All those arbitrarily detained should be immediately released and provided with adequate food, basic services, and access to doctors, lawyers, and family members," she said.
Bazoum was by the organization as saying his family’s treatment in custody has been “inhuman and cruel," and he has been deprived of electricity and human contact since early August.
"I’m not allowed to receive my family members [or] my friends who have been bringing food and other supplies to us," he said. “My son is sick, has a serious heart condition, and needs to see a doctor. They’ve refused to let him get medical treatment.”
Sanctions imposed by ECOWAS have banned goods from being brought in to Niger from other countries, which has ground to a halt attemps by the World Food Program to deliver food by trucks crossing over the Benin border. Other humanitarian aid has been constricted after the junta closed the airspace.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Niger receives about US$2 billion a year in development aid but is the world's seventh-biggest producer of uranium used in nuclear energy and cancer treatments. Niger also is home to about 1,100 U.S. troops operating from two U.S. bases.
