Gambiaj.com – (DAKAR, SENEGAL) – Three Senegalese civil society movements have filed a complaint against unknown individuals over what they describe as a growing wave of xenophobic and racist content circulating on social media.
The groups say they identified repeated calls for racial hatred from 25 social media accounts linked to 18 people during a three-month monitoring period. They have submitted the complaint to the Dakar High Court, asking prosecutors to investigate the accounts and pursue those responsible.
The initiative comes amid growing concern over the treatment of foreign communities in Senegal, particularly Guineans, and what activists say is the increasingly open expression of anti-immigrant views online.
Thierno Sokha Ndiaye, head of the Naw-Lé anti-racism collective, said Senegalese citizens should not leave the fight against xenophobia solely to foreigners who are targeted by such rhetoric.
“What we are seeking today as Senegalese is not to leave this issue only to foreigners, but to act directly against this xenophobic discourse, which is dehumanizing. Senegalese values are not values of exclusion,” he said.
Calls For Violence And Boycotts
The groups say the material they documented includes public insults directed at communities, calls for violence and messages they consider incitement to racial hatred.
Souleymane Guèye of the citizen movement FRAPP said the evidence collected includes accounts that have repeatedly circulated such messages.
“We have put together files on all the accounts operating on social networks that document these calls for hatred. There are public insults against communities and calls for murder. All these messages are unacceptable. We are asking the prosecutor to have these people arrested and for these speeches to stop,” he said.
The complaint follows an earlier case in August, when the National Federation of Shopkeepers filed a complaint over videos calling for a boycott of businesses operated by Guineans.
The videos were attributed to an influencer affiliated with a Senegalese nationalist party. He was subsequently placed in pre-trial detention.
Senegalese law provides for prison sentences ranging from six months to seven years for the dissemination of racist or xenophobic content online.
A Warning Beyond Social Media
The controversy is no longer confined to online platforms.
In a recent incident highlighted in the report, a passer-by reportedly declared that “Senegal belongs to Senegalese” and that “immigration has lasted too long” in the country. The comments triggered an altercation and required intervention by security forces.
For the civil society groups behind the complaint, such incidents illustrate the concern surrounding the normalisation of rhetoric targeting foreigners and ethnic or national communities.
Their intervention comes as Senegal continues to host large communities from across West Africa, including Guinea, Mali and other neighboring countries. The groups argue that allowing hostile rhetoric to spread unchecked online risks making discriminatory language increasingly acceptable in everyday public discourse.
The complaint therefore places the focus on whether Senegalese authorities will treat online xenophobic speech as isolated incidents or as a broader public-order and human-rights concern requiring sustained enforcement.
Leave a Reply