Guinea rights groups blast Conte for strike deaths
23 Jan 2007 15:44:00 GMT Source: Reuters
(Recasts with rights campaigners, increased death toll)
By Nick Tattersall and Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Human rights campaigners in Guinea accused President Lansana Conte on Tuesday of trying to crush a general strike by force as the death toll from violent clashes in the capital rose to more than 30.
Hospital officials had previously spoken of at least 17 people killed on Monday in Conakry, the deadliest day of a crippling two-week-old strike launched by unions against Conte's 23-year rule.
But Conakry's Donka Hospital reported on Tuesday its morgue had received 33 bodies following the clashes between strike supporters and security forces who opened fire to disperse them.
"They have 33 bodies. But the second hospital in town also has bodies. There were also people killed in the suburbs," Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Human Rights League, told Reuters.
Union chiefs say the president, a reclusive, chain-smoking diabetic in his 70s, is unfit to rule the bauxite-exporting West African state and are demanding he step aside.
But he has shown no sign of ceding power and the unions were considering their next move after Monday's bloodshed.
"Our first non-negotiable demand is the naming of a consensus prime minister to form a government but in this context, we cannot negotiate. There has to be a climate of peace," said Amadou Diallo, assistant secretary-general of the National Confederation of Guinean Workers (CNTG).
Conakry appeared calmer on Tuesday but some unconfirmed reports spoke of fresh killings in the outlying suburbs.
Sow said Conte seemed inflexible in his position.
"There's never been any real negotiations. (Conte) has said that he's the general, he gives the orders, he's the one to be obeyed, so there's never been any dialogue," he said.
Human rights groups cited witnesses saying Ousmane Conte, the president's son and a captain in the presidential guard, had led security operations against the strikers.
"It's the president's son who is directing the violence. This has become a family affair," Sow said.
The strike has halted bauxite shipments by the world's biggest exporter of the ore from which aluminium is extracted. But most of the 10 million population of the former French colony, deemed by Transparency International to be the most corrupt country in Africa, live in poverty.
"SHOOTING AT DEMONSTRATORS"
Thousands of protesters from the poor suburbs had tried to march into the city centre via a key urban highway bridge on Monday but were stopped by soldiers and police who opened fire, according to eyewitness reports.
"They were shooting at the demonstrators, not above their heads. They were kicking people who were wounded on the ground," said one foreign diplomat, citing the reports.
Police said the leaders of the two main unions organising the strike, who were detained on Monday with dozens of other people, had been released on Conte's orders.
Six people were also killed in disturbances in eastern Guinea on Monday, bringing the accumulated national death toll from the strike close to 50.
At least 150 people were injured in Conakry on Monday.
Besides Conakry, the security forces were also reinforcing their presence in up-country towns, where anti-government protesters have attacked public buildings during the strike.
The United Nations and African Union criticised the use of force by the authorities and called for a negotiated solution.
Analysts say an all-out conflict in Guinea, which has been ruled by Conte since he seized power in a 1984 coup, could risk spilling over into volatile neighbours like Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which have all suffered civil wars. (Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)
