The Day They Came for My Family: A Personal Account of Political Repression in Togo
"The Day They Came for My Family: A Personal Account of Political Repression in Togo" (Published: March 2025) On a quiet night in October 2021, my mother received a knock on the door in Lomé. It wasn’t a neighbor. It wasn’t a friend. It was two plainclothes officers from the security forces. They had one message: “Tell your son to stop writing. Or he will never return.” That was the day everything changed for me. My name is Komlan Eyram Mensah Dossou , and I am not just an activist — I am a son who had to choose between silence and survival. I chose survival, but not silence. Before that night, I had been publishing blogs, tweets, and articles denouncing the Gnassingbé regime. I had participated in digital campaigns and contributed to organizing diasporic solidarity events in Portugal and Turkey. I had never imagined the regime would retaliate through my family . The threats continued. I received anonymous WhatsApp messages. Screenshots of my posts were shared with death ...