Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Guinea: Bloody Repression Kills Dozens of anti-Junta Protesters

T. Miles | 29.09.2009 02:47 | Anti-militarism | Other Press | Repression

Today opposition and labor protesters descended from the main boulevards of the city to the national stadium ("Stade du 28 Septembre"), but were met with a ban order, lines of troops, live fire, and rumors that the military is disappearing captives and bodies of the dead. As many as 80 bodies have been rumored to have been laid out in the stadium itself. If anything like the events of 2007 reoccur, the military would be willing to continue this crackdown for weeks or even months.



Reports have been coming in all day of a mounting death toll among anti-Junta protesters in Conakry, Guinea.

The cadre of young officers around Moussa Dadis Camara, whose December 2008 coup raised expectations of the first real change in Guinea’s authoritarian kleptocracy since 1984, instead quickly reverted to type. The oppression of opponents and journalists, groups initially invited to consult with the CNDD coup government on a return to democracy and pluralism, are now victims of brutal and continual repression by the military and their civilian allies. Dadis Camara, reversing his original pledges, seems certain to run in the January 2010 Presidential elections, while mining interests and corrupt officials, at first purged from the military/technocrat government, are again in the drivers seat.

The bloody events of this September 28th — the 51st anniversary of Guinea’s rejection of union with France and its demand for independence — seem a continuation, even an escalation, of the force used to crush the January-February 2007 general strike. Today opposition and labor protesters descended from the main boulevards of the city to the national stadium (”Stade du 28 Septembre”), but were met with a ban order, lines of troops, live fire, and rumors that the military is disappearing captives and bodies of the dead. As many as 80 bodies have been rumored to have been laid out in the stadium itself. If anything like the events of 2007 reoccur, the military would be willing to continue this crackdown for weeks or even months.

There are also reports that opposition organizers Cellou Dalein Diallo, Jean-Marie Doré Sidya Touré, and leaders of the RPG party and the UFDG trade union were arrested and/or injured.

This follows the general strike in Labé on the weekend, when Dadis Camara’s new party the Rally for Defence of the Republic (RDR) chose the opposition stronghold and capital of the ethnically Peul/Fulani dominated Fouta Djallon highlands to unofficially launch his presidential campaign. A 20,000 strong protest march and general strike by the citizens of the area followed. In the midst of the violence in Conakry, there were reports that other regional centers saw protests brutally repressed.

Who can say what will happen: Conakry has seem abandoned by the world for more than a decade, since drought ground the massive hydroelectric plant in the north to a halt, throwing the city into darkness. Funds were never forthcoming to fix this Western backed white elephant, and so the infrastructure built around it decayed in place, with street lamps, homes, road, sanitation, and security collapsing on top. The increasingly brutal government of 1984 coup leader Lansana Conte tore through A Second Republic, and then a Third, with no real democracy on offer. The influx of refugees in the 1990s from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and later Cote d’Ivoire has pushed Guineans to the limit.

Now sanctions have followed the Coup, and Guinean’s suffering mounts. A Burkinabe columnist for L’Observateur Paalga wrote a week ago that “For a country that is among the poorest in the world and lives through grants from funding partners, are these the people who will pay the cost of the vile ambition of one man?”

A wild card here is the seemingly unwavering support Senegalese octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade has had for the Junta, even in the face of AU sanctions, Dadis Camara’s reversal on his pledges to see a democratic transition, show trials of (still likely corrupt) former officials, and random violence by military of all ranks. Expat Guinean opposition activists in Paris and New York have targeted Wade’s involvement in protests over the last month, and the Senegalese opposition have been quick to tie Wade’s support for dictatorship abroad with his continual promotion of his inexperienced son Karim into higher power and his announcement that after more than a decade in power and nearing 90, he will stand again in the next Senegalese presidential elections.

From such dirty dealing comes all sorts of unintended horrors. Also last week, there were reports of xenophobic attacks on Senegalese living in Conakry in retribution for Wade’s role in supporting the Junta. And Guineans in Senegal are beginning to fear they too might be targeted.

From a wider view, Dadis Camara’s behavior is one more in a tide of rising semi-dictatorships happening across West Africa. Two decades ago, the wave of democratization across the region set a thousand polisci students scribbling about a dawning of democratic institutions in West Africa. 2009-2010 may be the final collapse of that bubble. Nigerian academic and columnist Jibrin Ibrahim’s September 27th piece titled “Dramatic reversals” is a sad accounting of this process, from Niamey to Abidjan, to Bissau, Banjul, even Dakar and Conakry. He writes:
--
Presidents Jammeh of the Gambia and Wade of Senegal have arrogated to themselves the right to rule for ever. Presidents Tandja of Niger and Wade of Senegal are grooming their sons to take over from them. Blaise Compaore of Burkina has no son so he is grooming his brother to take over. To achieve their objectives, these presidents are dismantling the constitutional order of their countries.

In Niger, President Mamadou Tandja organised a constitutional ‘coup d’état‘ violating the Nigerien Constitution and the fundamental instruments of ECOWAS and the African Union (AU). He dissolved Parliament and the Constitutional Court for daring to challenge his reckless ambition.

In Guinea, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara is poised to fail to honour commitments he freely made not to be a candidate in the elections to be held in January 2010. He has been paying rented crowds to call on him to contest for the presidency. While we were in Accra, two of his colleagues, Sirleaf Johnson of Liberia and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal visited Conakry and joined the rented crowd in supporting the ambition of the putschist to remain in power.

Meanwhile, numerous human rights violations are occurring in Niger and in Guinea as the two leaders are arresting leading opposition elements and human rights activists. The International community under the leadership of ECOWAS has been putting pressure on President Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in Guinea to refrain from their political adventurism and the reversal of democratic gains in their countries so that West Africa does not return to the era of violent political conflict.

Paradoxically, Nigeria’s role in contesting the erosion of democracy in the region has been very positive.
--
 http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Opinion/Columns/5463116-148/DEPEENING_DEMOCRACY:_Dramatic_reversals.csp
---
Well, you can read the rest, but let us add the recent elections in Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Mauritania to the list. There is no secret here. There’s money to made; western and Chinese gold, uranium, oil, and gas firms are in the midst of a scramble for contracts across the region. Mali announced last week the first oil prospecting parcels covering the desert northeast Kidal Region were being auctioned off, in a place until recently in the midst of rebellion. The rumor in Niamey clearly holds for across the region: why leave just as we’re starting to cash in?

That Nigeria and Ghana are seeming exceptions may be explained in part through events like Obama’s endorsement of Accra’s business climate and the surprising crack down on millionaire Nigerian bank borrowers in arrears to failing banks. Resource extraction and rentier states are the longstanding way in which West Africa has fit into global capitalism. Lagos and Accra, though, are at the center of other changes, of deepening capitalist transformation. In Nigeria in particular there is enough of a business class, bolsters by kleptocracy over the last thirty years, that real live domestic capital accumulation is happening. There and in Ghana — not accidentally both anglophone — are becoming the jumping off points for foreign penetration of Africa. From here foreign firms are tumbling over one another to secure African states farther afield as sources of raw materials. But in the process, these forces, especially those from Asia, also are beginning the capturing of African markets themselves. The explosion of cheap Chinese motorbikes across Bamako or Western, Arab, and Asian telecom setting up shop in Accra; these are signs of a extension of world markets into West Africa as never before.

What’s happening in Conakry, as in many African capitals, is a battle for who will sign these contracts on the African side, and get very rich in the process. In Guinea, as recently in Niger and Gabon, some Africans are fighting this process. But they appear to be losing.

Some useful sources for keeping up with events in Conakry. Note that on the 28th, both Guinean news sites were getting periodic errors as their servers were overloading. Please hold off on hitting them too hard if you can:

*  http://www.guineenews.org/
*  http://www.aminata.com/
* GUINEA: Junta actions “beyond all acceptable limits”, rights activist says. 28 Sept 2009 IRIN
 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/59ad7c37c28ff2ffdd5fcdf3704537a4.htm

T. Miles
- Homepage: http://tomathon.com/mphp/

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. Wheres africom now?? http://www.africom.mil/AboutAFRICOM.asp — Green syndicalist
  2. Guinea has oil — Danny
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech