Senegal Blocks Forum, DRC Fights Ebola, Bukele Runs Again in El Salvador, and more.

HRF joins international condemnation of Senegal’s suppression of an international public forum on repression in neighboring Guinea. This alarming act of state censorship undermines Senegal’s respect for freedom of expression and assembly and a sanctuary for those fleeing dictatorship. It turns the regime of Bassirou Diomaye Faye into an accomplice to a military dictatorship’s transnational repression.

On July 9, police deployed around the Novotel hotel in the capital Dakar to enforce a directive from Senegal’s Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) ordering the cancelation of a roundtable on a pattern of enforced disappearances of critics of Guinea’s military regime. DST invoked the interests of Senegal in maintaining a positive diplomatic relationship with the Guinean regime.

Event organizer Alseny Farinta Camara— coordinator of the Guinea chapter of the pro-democracy movement Tournons La Page who has been living in exile in Senegal — experienced pressure from hotel management and the authorities in the days leading up to the event.

Local and international civic and human rights groups have denounced the actions of Senegalese authorities towards the roundtable, which marked the second year anniversary of Guinea’s military junta’s enforced disappearance of prominent pro-democracy activists Oumar Sylla and Mamadou Billo Bah. It followed TLP’s publication of a report documenting 35 cases of enforced disappearances of critics of the junta.

HRF is alarmed by the ongoing spread of the deadly Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Millions of Congolese already contending with violent conflict, displacement, and state neglect are left with a fragile and underresourced healthcare system and distrust of the authorities. Civilians living in territories under brutal occupation by invading troops from neighboring Rwanda and their M23 proxy militia remain largely cut off from international humanitarian aid. In this context, HRF expresses concern that both the regime of Congolese ruler Félix Tshisekedi and M23 may prioritize political gain over the lives of Congolese citizens in responding to the health crisis.

More than 600 people have died and nearly 1,800 people have been infected since the May 15 detection of the Ebola outbreak originating in the northeastern Congolese province of Ituri, where the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus spread undetected spread for months. The epidemic deepened an already unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in a region that was already sheltering hundreds of thousands of people displaced by horrific violence from armed groups in the area.

The epicenter of the outbreak is a mineral-rich region under military rule taht has been in a state of siege for more than five years, where ordinary citizens toil in poverty extracting natural resources enriching a corrupt ruling elite. While Tshisekedi is seeking to extend his rule through constitutional manipulation, health workers have gone on strike to protest months of unpaid salaries. Meanwhile, public distrust of the authorities has fueled resistance to health protocols and even violent attacks against Ebola treatment centers.

The epidemic has reached eastern Congo’s largest cities of Goma and Bukavu, where civilians live under the brutal occupation and de facto administration of Rwanda’s proxy M23 militia and Rwandan troops. M23’s parallel administration — which draws technical and material medical assistance from Rwanda’s regime — is promoting its handling of the crisis to gain international recognition as a competent and legitimate authority. However, M23 has kept Goma’s airport, the main humanitarian aid point of entry in North Kivu, closed, raising concerns about the militia’s siphoning of Ebola funds.