Police fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators throwing rocks in Thursday's violence.
A police commissioner was killed
in clashes in northern Togo between police and demonstrators who were
protesting against plans to relocate them from a nature reserve that
they had settled in, security sources said Friday.
Police fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators throwing rocks in Thursday's violence.
"In
the exchange between rocks being thrown and blasts of tear gas, a
police commissioner died," the security ministry said in a statement.
Togo
has been trying to rehabilitate a large nature preserve since 2012 but
placed the project on hold after residents' protests over relocation
degenerated into clashes with police earlier this month in which five
people were killed.
Thirty-five people were
arrested after those demonstrations, the security ministry said. Twenty
remained in police custody on Thursday, when protests broke out again to
pressure authorities to release them.
Togo had
declared 179,000 hectares (690 square miles) of the north to be a
national park to preserve local greenery and elephant migration routes,
but the area was largely abandoned during political crises in the 1990s.
Residents
settled down in the region, establishing villages, planting tracts and
grazing livestock, according to the United Nations Development
Programme.
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