Guinea: two police stations ransacked during a second day of anti-Condé mobilization

The mobilization launched Monday in Guinea by the opposition against the third term project attributed to President Alpha Condé continued on Tuesday, according to witnesses and the authorities, who said that two police stations had been ransacked in the city of Pita, 200 km from Conakry.

« The premises of the territorial gendarmerie and the central police station (de Pita) were stoned, ransacked and burnt down by the demonstrators, » the security ministry said in a statement.

« Several hundred » protesters « took the opportunity to steal weapons and food, including sacks of rice, » an anonymously eyed witness told AFP.

The National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), the collective of parties, unions and members of civil society which has been carrying out the protest for three months, after having organized large marches, has called for a “massive” mobilization and “unlimited” across the country from Monday.

Two demonstrators in their twenties were killed on Monday during clashes with the police in Conakry and Labé (north), according to authorities and the opposition.

In Conakry, clashes again raged protesters against the police on Tuesday, an AFP correspondent said. But activities in the capital, which had virtually ceased on Monday, including the closure of schools, banks and petrol stations, have tentatively resumed, the source said.

Demonstrations also took place again Tuesday in several other cities, in particular in Lelouma (north), where “a police officer was wounded by bullet” and two officials of the police force and gendarmerie “wounded by throwing stones”, according to the Ministry of Security.

Since mid-October, the FNDC has repeatedly taken tens or hundreds of thousands of Guineans to the streets in this small country of 13 million people. More than 20 civilians were killed, as well as a gendarme, and dozens of people arrested.

The opposition is convinced that the head of state, elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2015, intends to stand for re-election in late 2020, when the Constitution limits the number of presidential terms to two.

She was reinforced in her fears in December when Mr. Condé, 81, indicated that he intended to submit to the Guineans a draft of a new Constitution, even if he did not express himself on his personal intentions.