A private television has been raided on Sunday. Senegalese police raided the private television station after it repeatedly transmitted images of police beating demonstrators during an illegal protest over high food prices.

The private news channel “Walf TV” broadcast footage of police striking demonstrators with electrified batons & firing tear gas to break up the banned protest by more than a hundred people in the suburbs of the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Three people were arrested, including the head of the Association of Senegalese Consumers, the group which organised the march to call attention to a sharp rise in the cost of living in the poor West African country. After the images were broadcast, dozens more youths gathered to throw stones at police.

An official of Walf Tv said, “Members of the DIC entered our offices & demanded us to hand over the cassettes of today’s demonstration”.

Dakar witnessed the worst rioting in more than a decade last year, as hundreds of youths smashed windows & burned tyres in anger at high prices and government efforts to clear away street traders.

Violent protests have also taken place in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mozambique & Mauritania in recent months over a sharp rise in the cost of food, partly due to high international fuel prices & the increasing use of bio-fuels.