The nation-wide strikes which brought Chad's biggest cities to a halt this week over President Idriss Deby Itno's planned bid for re-election are some of the most significant protests of the hard-liner's 26-year rule.
The strike, which ran under the slogan "That's Enough", successfully locked down N'Djamena, leaving classrooms emptied and the capital's two big markets deserted in a protest mirrored in cities across the country. In the capital, people are still amazed by the sheer scale of the work stoppage during Wednesday's "dead city" operation, saying they can recall no demonstration as large against their hard-line leader. The stoppage was organised by a coalition of civil society organisations grouped under the name "Ca Suffit" - French for 'that's enough'.
The morning to lunchtime shutdown "was total" in Chad's second-biggest city, Moundou, a resident told AFP, who said not even the motorbike taxis were running. "The population has realised they can exercise their democratic rights," coalition spokesman Mahamat Nour Ibedou told AFP, saying the protest was even observed in provincial towns.
Many Chadians are fed up with entrenched poverty, especially since their country has begun to make money from oil exports. In recent weeks, Chad has been gripped by a wave of unrest with students taking to the street in fury over the gang rape of a girl in mid-February, allegedly by the sons of a government minister and three army generals.
The girl was allegedly kidnapped and gang-raped by five young men who then posted a video online showing the victim naked and in tears.
The protests began on February 15. Deby's regime banned demonstrations with the army enforcing the ban, firing on youths, with two students killed and a least five wounded in a week of protests, hospital staff and human rights activists said.
The authorities also blocked access to Facebook and other social networks to crack down on the dissent, but the unprecedented city shutdown fired up talk in white-collar offices as well as in the working-class districts.
"This is the first time in the history of this country that people unanimously respect an appeal from civil society," said Issa Moussa, who works at the ministry of territorial administration.
In a country where people are reluctant to speak out in public for fear of trouble with the police, Moussa was the only person who did not ask to remain anonymous.
"People are unhappy and the success of this 'dead city' operation is also to be explained by the build-up of people's frustration over 25 years," said a civil servant in the justice ministry. "We respected the watchword because of the humiliation imposed on Zouhoura's family," said a trader who joined the strike in N'Djamena's central market, referring to the girl who was allegedly raped.
More than a quarter of a century of unshared power by Deby has taken a toll. "There's been a change of generation and of mentality which is taking place," a sociologist said regarding the scale of the protest.
"Truth to tell, the Zouhoura affair is only a pretext, the small spark that infuriated this silent majority that has begun to say 'No'," said the editorialist of the weekly Le Pays.
High school students are continuing their strikes after the killings by the army and police.
Faced with steady domestic dissent, Deby reacts with repression and bans. As a warlord, he has fought off successive rebellions from the east of Chad and he has exported the military know-how of a seasoned army to fight jihadists in the Sahel and the Nigerian Islamists of Boko Haram.
Students were forbidden from demonstrating, then a similar ban was slapped on the political opposition led by Saleh Kebzabo on Tuesday, and the crackdown on social networks was matched by the censorship of protest on national television.
In a statement received Friday by AFP, the political opposition offered "its unwavering support to Chadian youth, which is only demanding its rights."
Ahead of the first round of voting in the presidential election on April 10, the opposition urged Chadians to "turn this sombre page in their history by bringing about change by legal and peaceful means, the only safeguard to pull the country out of a rut."
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