Two days after an attack on a funeral procession led to two deaths among the mourners, security forces in Guinea have killed two more protesters in Conakry.
Mamadou Bela Baldé had just emerged from his house in the company of three others when he was hit in the head by a bullet fired by the military. One of his colleagues, Mamadou Alimou Diallo, was also fatally hit in the chest in the Conakry suburb of Wanidara on November 6, 2019.
A source at the Ignace Deen Hospital confirmed having received the two bodies.
Two days before this incident (November 4, 2019), the security forces had killed two people who were part of a procession accompanying the dead bodies of eleven people killed in earlier crackdowns on anti-government demonstrators.
Related: Two Dead as Police Attack Funeral Procession of Killed Protesters
The protest at Wanidara was part of a continuing show of defiance in the face of police brutalities against demonstrators opposed to President Alpha Conde’s third term ambitions. Several other suburbs of the capital were also rocked by similar protests called by the Front National pour la Defense de la Constitution (FNDC), a coalition of opposition and civil society groups leading the campaign against proposed constitutional changes to remove term limits.
The latest deaths bring the toll to at least fifteen among protesters with one gendarme also reported dead back on the October 14 when the first of the recent clashes began.
Guinea is fast becoming unsafe for people expressing dissent through public demonstrations, and the MFWA is deeply concerned at the continuing lack of accountability for these deaths. We urge the authorities to call the security agents to order and to ensure that deaths of protesters resulting from the reckless actions of the police or military are not shrouded in impunity. We also call on President Alpha Conde to demand answers from his ministers responsible for security and public order.