On January 10, 2025, a father, an entrepreneur and a poet, Honoré Sitsopé Sokpor, poured his heart out in a poem he published on his Facebook account. Two days later, he was picked up by plainclothes officers at La Pampa junction in Adidogomé, a neighbourhood of the capital, Lomé. According to eyewitnesses, Sokpor, also known as “Affectio,” was beaten and forced into an unmarked vehicle by the officers.
Two days after his arrest, January 14, 2025, Sokpor was put before the public prosecutor at the Court of First Instance in Lomé. He was charged with “undermining the internal security of the State” and remanded to the Lomé civil prison pending further investigation.
It is almost a year since the poet was put in pretrial detention with no trial, a gross abuse of his rights to expression, movement and justice; and a gross violation of the the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Togo is a Party, having ratified the Covenant in May 1984.
Moreover, Togo’s Constitution, in Article 25, clearly states that every person has the right to freedom of thought, of conscience, of religion, of belief, of opinion and expression. Although the Constitution also indicates that the aforementioned rights must be exercised with respect to the freedoms of others, public order, and established laws and regulations, Sokpor’s case has not even been tried to provide a basis for his continued detention.
Affectio’s continued detention is far from an isolated case; it fits a broader pattern in which critical voices are systematically remanded in custody pending trial. His situation mirrors that of Essissomna Marguerite Gnakadé, a former defence minister arrested on September 17, 2025, after months of outspoken criticism of President Faure Gnassingbé’s administration and the recent constitutional reforms, as well as that of cyber activist Grace Koumayi Bikoyi, who was seized from her home on October 3, 2025, by unidentified plainclothes agents. Together, these incidents highlight the deepening trend of serious human rights violations.
As the world marks International Human Rights Day today, December 10, 2025, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) calls on Togolese authorities to unconditionally release Affectio, Essissomna Marguerite Gnakadé and Grace Koumayi Bikoyi with immediate effect and compensate them for the lost time in pretrial detention.
