Clashes pitted dozens of young Guineans against the security forces on Wednesday August 17 in the suburbs of Conakry, partially paralyzed following a call to demonstrate against the junta in power for a year, noted a correspondent for the AFP.
The groups of young people clashed with the police and the gendarmes with stones on the Route Le Prince, an axis crossing the suburbs of the capital and frequent scene of such confrontations.
Security forces responded with tear gas.
Two days of events
The National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), a coalition of parties, trade unions and civil society organisations, had called for peaceful mobilization despite the ban on all demonstrations decreed on May 13 by the junta and the decision of this last to dissolve the collective last week.
The FNDC orchestrated from 2019 to 2021 months of mobilization against a third presidential term of Alpha Condé (2010-2020), finally overthrown on September 5, 2021 by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.
The FNDC is now the voice of protest against the junta, the opposition being considerably weakened.
The FNDC calls for a return to constitutional order and denounces the confiscation of power by the military.
The FNDC had been at the initiative of two days of demonstrations on July 28 and 29, banned by the authorities and in which five people had been killed.
The authorities have deployed gendarmes and police in large numbers.
Different neighborhoods in the suburbs gave the appearance of a ghost town in the morning.
Many businesses and major markets remained closed amid fears of violence.
New tensions
The police dispersed an attempt to gather young people wearing the logo and colors of the FNDC in Dixinn, in the inner suburbs, noted the AFP correspondent.
Two of the FNDC leaders, Oumar Sylla alias Foniké Mangué and Ibrahima Diallo, have been detained since the demonstrations at the end of July.
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These new tensions come as the organization of West African states ECOWAS announced the visit to Conakry on Sunday of its mediator in the Guinean crisis, former Beninese President Thomas Boni Yayi.
Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, now inducted president, has pledged to return power to elected civilians within three years.
But the opposition and ECOWAS want a shorter transition.
Political parties and civil society are increasingly making their voices heard against the repression of freedoms and the instrumentalization of justice by the authorities.