SUMMARY
In connection with the transition from a single-party system to a multi-party democracy and the armed conflicts over government and territory during the 1990s, armed forces of the Government of Niger have on several occasions committed one-sided violence against civilians.
The vast majority of the civilians killed by government forces were members of ethnic minorities, the Touareg in the north, and the Toubou in the east. The incidents of one-sided violence can thus be related to the conflicts between the government and the insurgent movements of the minority groups. However, it should be noted that two major events of one-sided violence occurred prior and after active conflicts between the Government of Niger and the Touareg groups in the north and eastern rebel movements respectively.
A severe incident occurred in early May 1990, when members of the Nigerien Armed Forces massacred probably several hundreds of civilians belonging to the Touareg in the northern town of Tchin Tarabadene. The violence was carried out in retaliation for a preceding attack by Touareg rebels against a police post in the area.
In 1995, civilians were killed by the army in a similar fashion when advancing against the FDR (Front démocratique pour le renouveau, Democratic Front for Renewal) rebel movement in eastern Niger. 29 villagers were shot when they were suspected to hide FDR fighters in their village. In 1998, a mass grave containing the corpses of almost 150 bodies was discovered in the eastern Diffa region. The victims were identified as civilians belonging to the Toubou minority. The massacre reportedly occurred after a joint operation of armed forces from Niger, Nigeria and Chad in the Lake Chad area, during which over 900 Toubou refugees were returned from northern Nigeria to Niger. The grave was found in an area controlled by the Nigerien army and the corpses displayed clear signs of a massacre with deadly injuries yielding from gunshot wounds and torture.
In addition to these major events, some isolated incidents of one-sided violence are reported, which occurred under less clear circumstances and that might have resulted of excess violence used by security forces or, on some occasions, related to demonstrators that turned violent against police. While some of these events are unclear, they nevertheless confirm the negative track record of the Nigerien security apparatus in terms of human rights violations.
The Government of Niger first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1990, when the one-sided violence resulted in more than 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in early May that year, when hundreds of civilians belonging to the Touareg minority were killed in Tchin Tarabadene.
