Seventeen police officers were injured, one of them seriously, after violent spontaneous demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday in Conakry which followed the brutal arrest of three leaders of a collective, Guinean police said on Wednesday (July 6th) in a press release.
Clashes between security forces and groups of young people erupted in suburban neighborhoods of the capital to protest against the arrest of members of the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), a coalition that had orchestrated months of mobilization from 2019 to 2021 against former President Alpha Condé (2010-2021), overthrown in September 2021 by a junta led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.
A precarious calm returned
The demonstrators burned tires, erected barricades, overturned garbage cans and stoned the police, who tried to disperse them with tear gas canisters.
A precarious calm had returned to the capital on Thursday, noted an AFP journalist.
These spontaneous demonstrations are among the first in a context of protest since the seizure of power by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.
The FNDC had called for demonstrations on June 23, overriding the ban imposed by the junta.
He had suspended his call the day before the demonstration, to "
give a chance
" to the dialogue proposed by the transitional government.
But after the last meeting with him, the FNDC denounced "
a parody of the meeting
", as well as "
the solitary and authoritarian conduct of the transition
" and "
the serious attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms
".
Violent arrests
The national coordinator of the FNDC, Oumar Sylla - known as Foniké Mengué -, Mamadou Billo Bah and the rapper Alpha Midiaou Bah - alias Djanii Alfa - were violently arrested on Tuesday by the police at the headquarters of their coalition, where they were holding a press conference.
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Sylla and Bah were beaten and their clothes torn by police.
They were still in custody on Thursday, awaiting trial.
Much of the political class condemned the arrest of the three men and was indignant at the method.
Read alsoGuinea: the head of the junta dismisses a prefect who cut the hair of high school students
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Sylla and Bah are being prosecuted for having "
produced and disseminated through a computer system insulting remarks against the National Transitional Council (CNT)
", the transitional parliament set up by the junta, explained Tuesday the prosecutor of the Conakry Court of Appeal, Alphonse Richard Wright, on the private radio station Fim FM.
Rapper Djanii Alfa had recently criticized remarks by the president of the CNT, before being threatened with arrest by the prosecutor, according to his lawyer.
