The coup leaders have refused to cede power despite international pressure.
Niger’s ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, has said he is being kept isolated and forced to eat dry rice and pasta by the military junta that overthrew him.
The coup leaders have refused to cede power despite international pressure.
In a series of text messages to a friend, Bazoum said he has been “deprived of all human contact” since Friday, with no one supplying him food or medicine, according to a report by CNN.
According to the messages given to CNN with the ousted president’s consent, Bazoum said he has been living without electricity for a week, as have many Nigeriens.
Nigeria supplies much of neighboring Niger’s electricity but cut off the power in response to the coup.
All the perishable food he was supplied with has since gone bad, and he is now eating dry pasta and rice.
Despite his isolation, Bazoum has been in contact with the outside world. Though denied the chance to speak with acting US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland during her visit to Niamey, the Nigerien capital, on Monday, Bazoum spoke by phone with her boss – Secretary of State Antony Blinken – a day later, the State Department said.
Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, the prime minister in Bazoum’s government, told French TV that the president was in good spirits despite being held in a “catastrophic situation.”
Hopes for a diplomatic resolution to the political conflict, however, have begun to fade.
Nuland’s meeting Monday with senior coup leaders lasted more two hours, consisting of “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” conversations.
A Tuesday face-to-face meeting that was supposed to take place in Niamey between the junta and representatives from the United Nations, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was cancelled at short notice.
Junta leaders said in a letter that postponement of the meeting was “necessary” in “this atmosphere of threatened aggression against Niger.”
However, Mahamadou, Bazoum’s prime minister, told French state-funded broadcaster TV5-Monde that the junta would like to continue dialogue with ECOWAS, the bloc that has been leading the regional response to the political crisis in Niger.
Col. Maj. Amadou Abradamane, a spokesman for the junta, accused France of violating Niger’s airspace, which the country had closed on Sunday due to the threat of military intervention.
The aircraft was in Nigerien airspace for five hours starting at 6:39 a.m. and had willingly cut contact with Niger air traffic control, Abradamane alleged on Wednesday. He said that the aircraft had taken off from Chad’s capital N’djamena.