dead in the space of two days in connection with protest events to mark Biafra Remembrance Day on 30 May. This was similar in pattern to the attacks and excessive use of force in December 2015 on gatherings in which the military slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children in Zaria in Kaduna state during a confrontation with members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria. In South Africa, student protests resumed in August at universities across the country under the banner of #FeesMustFall. The protests regularly ended in violence. While there may have been some violence on the students’ side, Amnesty International documented many reports of police using excessive force, including firing rubber bullets at short range at students and supporters generally. One student leader was shot in the back 13 times with rubber bullets on 20 October in Johannesburg. In Zimbabwe, police continued to clamp down on protest and strike action in Harare using excessive force. Hundreds of people were arrested for participating in peaceful protests in different parts of the country, including Pastor Evan Mawarire, leader of the #ThisFlag campaign, who was briefly arrested in an attempt to suppress growing dissent, and who eventually fled the country when he feared for his life. In many of these protests and more, including in Chad, Republic of the Congo (Congo), DRC, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Lesotho and Uganda, there was an increasing crackdown on social media and patterns of arbitrary restriction or shutting down of access to the internet. ATTACKS ON HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS AND JOURNALISTS Human rights defenders and journalists were frequently in the front line of human rights violations, with the right to freedom of expression suffering both steady erosions and new waves of threats. Attempts to crush dissent and tighten the noose around freedom of expression manifested themselves across the continent, including in Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Amnesty International Report 2016/17 Gambia, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia. Some had to pay the ultimate price. A prominent human rights lawyer, his client and their taxi driver were subjected to forced disappearance and extrajudicial killing by police in Kenya. They were among more than 177 cases of individuals extrajudicially executed at the hands of security agencies during the year. In Sudan, the murder of 18year-old Sudanese university student Abubakar Hassan Mohamed Taha and 20year-old Mohamad Al Sadiq Yoyo by intelligence agents came against a backdrop of intensified repression of student dissent. Two journalists were killed in Somalia by unidentified assailants, in a climate in which journalists and media workers were harassed, intimidated and attacked. Many others faced arbitrary arrests and continued to face prosecution and detention for their work. Despite some positive steps in Angola – including the acquittal of human rights defenders and release of prisoners of conscience – politically motivated trials, criminal defamation charges and national security laws continued to be used to suppress human rights defenders, dissent and other critical voices. In DRC, youth movements were classified as insurrectional groups. Elsewhere, the whereabouts of politicians and journalists arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared in Eritrea since 2001 remained unknown, despite the government’s announcement that they were still alive. In Mauritania, although the Supreme Court ordered the release of 12 anti-slavery activists, three remained in detention and anti-slavery organizations and activists continued to face persecution by the authorities. Beyond imprisonment, human rights defenders and journalists also faced physical assaults, intimidation and harassment in many countries including in Chad, Gambia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan. On 18 April, Zimbabwe’s Independence Day, state security agents brutally assaulted 17