At least two people were killed in Guinea’s capital Conakry when armed security forces attacked the neighborhoods of political activists on the eve of planned demonstrations against the junta that seized power in 2021, protest organisers said on Tuesday.
A collective of opposition parties and organizations said in a statement that two young men aged 16 and 18 had been killed during an operation by security forces in the capital’s suburbs on Monday, the eve of the 2nd anniversary of the September 5, 2021 putsch. No comment was obtained from the authorities.
The “Forces Vives” collective had called for a “peaceful” march on Tuesday to demand a swift return to civilian rule. But the authorities banned all public gatherings.
The Ministry of Territorial Administration issued a press release on Monday evening recalling “the formal ban on support movements and demonstrations on public thoroughfares” decreed in May 2022. It cited the need to “preserve public tranquility”.
As has been the case every time the authorities have prevented demonstrations since 2022, scattered mobile groups of young people set up barricades, burned tires, and pelted security forces with stones. The latter retaliated with riot gear in the neighborhoods of Sonfonia, Wanindara and Hamdallaye, traditional hotbeds of protest, witnesses told an AFP correspondent.
A Sonfonia doctor, Aliou Kamara, said he had received five young people suffering from minor injuries, “certainly caused by blows from truncheons and stone-throwing”.
Sonfonia had already been the scene of clashes on Monday. The authorities have chosen “bloody repression (against) Guineans with the sole aim of seizing power”, the Forces vives said in a statement on Tuesday.
Guinea, a poor country with a troubled political history, has been ruled by a junta since the military overthrew civilian president Alpha Condé on September 5, 2021, in one of the successive putsches in West Africa since 2020.
Under international pressure, the military have agreed to hand over to elected civilians by the end of 2024, to allow time for far-reaching reforms, they say.
In a press release announcing their demonstration on Tuesday, the Forces Vives claimed that “after two years of power exercised by the Guinean military junta, the rupture with the people of Guinea is completely consummated”.
In addition to banning demonstrations, the junta has arrested a number of opposition leaders, launched legal proceedings against others and dissolved a citizens’ collective critical of its actions.
The Forces vives accuse the authorities of having taken no steps towards a transfer of power. “There is as yet no draft constitution, no electoral code, no election management body, no technical operator, no electoral register, no realistic election budget”, they said.
The authorities did not announce any celebrations to mark the second anniversary of the coup. They did, however, dispatch members of the junta and the government it had set up to the media to defend the two-year anniversary.
They brandished the investments made in facilities such as hospitals, the drafting of a multitude of laws and regulations, the creation of a court against financial crime or the holding of a trial for years of a massacre committed in 2009 under another junta. They denied repressing freedom of expression.
Territorial Administration Minister Mory Condé assured television viewers that the government was “ahead” of the timetable agreed with the regional organization Ecowas for the return of civilians to power.
“Guinea is getting better and better, thanks to the vision of its Head of State, Colonel Doumbouya,” said General Amara Camara, Minister Secretary General of the Presidency.
Credit: africanews.com
