Our colleague and friend, Ali Idrissa, is in jail. By using spurious charges against him for the third time, the government of Niger pursue their disgraceful harassment of the anti-corruption movement. I urge them to see sense and free Ali and his fellow campaigners immediately. One of the world’s largest exporters of uranium, Niger has a vital role to play in upholding the transparency of extractive industries. Fresh from its exit from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)...Ali’s arrest marks a new phase. The government is no longer backsliding, it is in free-fall...Ali coordinates the national chapter of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) in Niger and sits on the PWYP Board...Authorities claim Ali, together with 26 others, are guilty of organising an unlawful gathering to protest a new finance law – a law which experts and civil society say is regressive and opaque...the case of Ali and his fellow campaigners shows a broader, worrying pattern of governments spurning the norms and principles they claim to stand for...And last month, back in Niger, TV journalist Baba Alpha was jailed, wrenched away from his family, stripped of his citizenship and forcibly exiled to Mali: all for doing his job...Niger must release Ali and his compatriots. The government of Niger is violating human rights. And by cloaking its uranium dealings in suspicious secrecy, it hurts its citizens’ chances of prosperity and opportunity, and the global drive for a transparent mining, oil and gas sector. Niger’s leaders are losing stature on every single count. Its people – and the world – are literally poorer for it.