Economic activity slowed on Sept. 5 in Conakry, Guinea, where a protest movement had little traction, three years to the day after the military seized power. The opposition has called for peaceful demonstrations to denounce the junta’s crackdown on dissidents, restore freedoms and demand a return to civilian rule before the end of the year, a highly unlikely prospect.
But their call went unheeded, according to an Agence France-Presse correspondent, who noted that economic activity in the capital had nevertheless declined. No one demonstrated, despite the fact that it rained for most of the day and police and army tanks occupied public spaces en masse.
The repression of demonstrations, which have been systematically banned, has left forty-seven people dead between September 2021 and April 2024, according to Amnesty International. On 4 September, a woman was shot dead during clashes between police and protesters, fatally shot while in a taxi, and clashes broke out in the Sonfonia neighbourhood in northern Conakry.
The promise of a constitution
Malick Sidibé, a retired civil servant, does not hide “his disappointment and his anger” against General Mamadi Doumbouya, head of the junta. He says he cannot bear “their double language” and its revocation of a promise to usher in civilian rule by the end of the year, a commitment made under international pressure and which the junta failed to keep.
In an interview on Fulfulde’s RFI programme on 5 September, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah said the aim was to organise a referendum for a new constitution before the end of the year, without making a categorical commitment. “We ask people to understand that the work we are doing right now has never been done before.”declared.
General Mamadi Doumbouya will return from China, where he participated in the summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. No official activity is planned during the three years since the arrival of this junta which succeeded President Alpha Condé, a civilian president who had been in power for more than ten years and who had sparked months of protests that left dozens dead when he ran for a third term.
Under Mamadi Doumbouya’s regime, many opposition leaders were arrested, brought before judges or forced into exile. On 9 July, two leaders of the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), a citizen movement calling for the return of civilians to power in Guinea, Foniké Menguè and Mamadou Billo Bah, were arrested. Since then, these opposition figures have disappeared and no one has heard from them, except for one member of their group who testified about his brutal arrest by gunmen, although it has not been possible to corroborate this testimony from an independent source.
Two activists missing
Their wives spoke out in an open letter on September 5. “We call on the people of Guinea and the international community to bear witness to the manifest desire of the ruling junta to eliminate our husbands”They said, calling on the junta chief to be allowed to contact their husbands. Guinea’s attorney general denied any arrests and ordered investigations into the disappearance of the two activists. “No penitentiary establishment in the country holds these people who are the target of kidnapping”he said in mid-July.
On August 30, the US Embassy in Guinea said: “deeply concerned about the disappearance and welfare” of the two men, a rare reaction within the international community. “Diplomatically, the junta inherited a diverse portfolio, with several important partners: France, the United States, China, Russia and Turkey, in addition to the United Arab Emirates and Rwanda.”explained Vincent Foucher, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research, on his X account on September 5.
And to continue: “This diversity gives the board room for manoeuvre. France [l’ancienne puissance coloniale] He is careful not to criticise the excesses of the junta in order to avoid being marginalised as happened in the Sahel. Hence his silence. On May 22, authorities withdrew approval from four radio stations and two television stations among Guinea’s main private media outlets. On September 2, they suspended the issuance of approvals to associations and non-governmental organizations due to “actions to disrupt public order carried out on the ground by several NGOs and associative movements”according to these authorities.
