Authorities have suspended the bank accounts of prominent supporters, fined media agencies accused of “exaggerated reporting” of police abuses – including broadcasting graphic footage of soldiers gunning down protesters in Lagos last month – and conducted arrests of demonstrators.

Nigerian authorities appear to have used coercive financial measures to suppress protests against police brutality and independent media reporting, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Friday.

Twenty individuals and entities, judged as prominent supporters of “end Sars” protests against the since-disbanded, infamously brutal special anti-robbery squad, have had their accounts suspended by Nigerian banks, preventing them from receiving funds. On 4 November, the Central Bank of Nigeria obtained a court order authorising it to block the accounts for 90 days.

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Those targeted had been raising or received money in support of protests that had erupted across Nigeria last month, providing medical and legal aid for injured and arrested demonstrators, grants for journalists to cover police and army abuses at the protests, and help to families of those killed during the demonstrations.

Lawyers for Nigeria’s Central Bank argued in court this week that the account-holders were involved in “suspected terrorism financing”.

Among the accounts suspended was Gatefield, a public policy organisation that had offered financial assistance to journalists covering the demonstrations, its founder, Adewunmi Emoruwa, said.

“We were providing financial and technical support to independent journalists and media organisations to report on police brutality and to document the protests. But then the government restricted Gatefield’s account through a back-channel instruction to Access Bank. The idea is to create a media blackout in a bid to cover up the various atrocities committed by the state against the peaceful protesters,” he said.

Source: Nigeria cracks down on ‘end Sars’ protesters, alleging terrorism