Gabon's president appeals to international community for help after military coup
Gabon's President Ali Bongo today appealed to the international community for help from his residence, where he is being held after the military announced this morning that it has seized power in the African country.
"I must send a message to all the friends we have around the world to tell them to make noise, because these people have arrested me and my family," the president said in a video posted on the social networking site X (formerly Twitter).
"Right now I'm in the residence and nothing is happening. I don't know what's going on. So I call on you to make noise, make noise, make real noise," Bongo added, noting that his son and wife were elsewhere but without elaborating.
Before the broadcast of this video, the military junta assured in a televised message that the president, his family and his doctor are under house arrest and also announced the arrest of one of his sons, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, and his chief of staff, Ian Ghislain Ngoulou, among other people close to him.
The officers accused those arrested of "high treason against state institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds, international financial embezzlement by an organised gang, forgery and use of forgery of the signature of the President of the Republic, and drug trafficking".
Earlier, the coup plotters had announced the dissolution of all Gabon's institutions shortly after the country's electoral commission reported the victory of Bongo, in power since the death of his father in 2009, in the disputed elections on the 26th.
The self-styled Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (CTRI) said the vote was not transparent, credible or inclusive, and accused the country's government of governing "irresponsibly and unpredictably", thus undermining "social cohesion".
Some countries reacted to these events, including Russia, which expressed its "deep concern" through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
France, for its part, condemned the coup and called for "respect" for the results of the elections "when they are known", according to French government spokesman Olivier Véran, in an ambiguous reaction to the announcements that had been made previously.
The social network X was filled today with videos of Gabonese celebrating the uprising by the military, which has opened internet connections after authorities blocked them last Saturday.
There has already been a coup attempt - the first since 1964 - against Bongo in 2019, although that year's attempt was unsuccessful.
The announcement of the military takeover in Gabon followed the army coup in Niger on 26 July.
Niger then became the fourth West African country to be led by a military junta, after Mali, Guinea-Conakry and Burkina Faso, which also had coups between 2020 and 2022.