At least two people died and some 60 were injured in the repression of protests in the capital of Guinea-Conakry, this Thursday, for the return to constitutional order after the coup in September 2021, the opposition denounced this Friday.
The National Front in Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), officially dissolved by the Guinean authorities, indicated in a message on its Facebook account that the “provisional balance” of the protests is two dead and 58 injured, including several who were hit by bullets.
According to the same source, the dead are two young people aged 16 and 19 and 47 people were detained by security forces.
The organization also denounced police raids on “private homes”, as well as “acts of looting and public insults by the security forces against pro-democratic activists” during the repression of the protests.
The head of the Guinea-Conakry National Police, Abdoulaye Sampil, declined to comment on the casualties among the protesters, saying that seven officers were injured during the protests, according to the Media Guinée news portal.
Groups of Guinean youths and security forces were involved in clashes in the suburbs of Conakry on Thursday.
Several neighborhoods along Via Le Prince, which crosses that suburb, were the scene of clashes between groups of young people, who threw stones and erected barricades on the road, and carabinieri and military police, who tried to disperse them with tear gas. shots being heard.
The clashes will have started on Wednesday night.
The protest was called by the FNDC, despite the fact that the Guinean junta prohibited demonstrations to demand a return to constitutional order in the face of delays by the military authorities in calling for elections after the 2021 coup.
In August, the opposition body submitted a list of 13 people to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their alleged role in the repression of the protests, including the leader of the military junta and transitional president, Mamady Doumbouya.
The National Committee for Reconciliation and Development (CNRD), the official name of the board, was formed after the September 2021 coup against the then president, Alpha Condé, after months of political crisis in the country over the decision of the head of state to reform the Constitution to run for a third term and his victory in the 2020 presidential elections, in which the other candidates denounced fraud.
The FNDC called a march to demand the release of three of its imprisoned leaders and all those imprisoned for political reasons, as well as the prompt return of civilians to power. The main parties, practically reduced to inaction, also called for mobilization.
Guinea-Conakry is ruled by a military junta that seized power in a coup on September 5, 2021, one of several similar coups in West Africa in the past two years. The ruling military junta has banned all demonstrations since 2022.
The military has pledged to hand power over to civilians after the elections, at the end of a period during which it says it wants to complete a wide range of reforms.
The junta agreed, under pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to limit this transition period to two years from January 2023.
The opposition accuses the military junta of seizing power and silencing dissenting voices by arresting political and civil society leaders and launching judicial investigations.
The main parties refuse to talk with the military junta about the content of the so-called transition period, under the conditions established by the authorities in power in Conakry.
Source: TSF
