Also posted to dKos and MyLeftWing.
[Updated with my friend's report.]
For the past two weeks, there has been a general strike in Guinea (West Africa). Thousands of union and grassroots marchers have been protesting throughout the country. Government forces have killed at least 59 people and injured over 250.
This is the third strike in a year marked by rapid inflation and rampant corruption in the country. While most of the country is shut down, those merchants still doing business have doubled the price of staple foods.
President Lansana Conte has been in office since 1984. There have been elections but their validity has been contested.
On Saturday, in a speech calling for calm Conte said:
Those who want power must wait their turn. It is God who gives power and when he gives it to someone, everyone must stand behind him.
On Wednesday, Conte agreed to appoint a new prime minister. However, according to Reuters:
Union leaders have said they will not call an end to their action until … President Conte [agrees to] hand over all his powers to a prime minister acceptable to the unions.
The BBC has some photos from Monday’s protests – including where someone is holding a placard reading (in French) “We are ready to die for change”.
The BBC carried this eyewitness account of Monday’s violence by Bah Rahim, 32:
The march was huge and I saw the military kill two people right in front of me.
It started when I went outside to join the protesters at nine o’clock.
We were in my suburb of Hamdallaye and as the soldiers began shooting everyone ran to the police station but the shooting continued. It was there at the police station that I was shocked to see two people shot dead.
But this didn’t stop the crowd. We moved forward towards the 8 Novembre Bridge – the way into the centre of Conakry. It’s a long way, about 10km.
At the crossing there were so many soldiers and they started shooting their guns again, and killed more than seven people.
It was not my first terrifying experience with the military. Last Thursday I saw two young boys – aged about seven or eight – throw a stone at a military vehicle as it passed by.
The soldiers responded with machine-gun fire. The children ran inside and were not hurt, but you can see five bullet holes in the wall near my compound.
From the WaPo (finally reporting on this 2 weeks after it started):
Tensions eased considerably Wednesday after an announcement that Conté had agreed to name a prime minister, a move his critics hope will be a step toward his relinquishing some power.
On Thursday, a commission including government officials, union leaders and representatives of civil groups met to discuss the powers of the prospective prime minister. The panel is supposed to present its proposal to Conté soon.
The true death toll from the violence might never be known. Residents said some bodies were not taken to hospitals but were swiftly buried by family members. Muslim custom in Guinea requires that the dead be buried within 24 hours.
Many residents have accused the government of corruption and misrule, which they blame for leaving much of the country without adequate water, electricity or jobs.
Many also worry that Conté’s resignation or death could create a power vacuum, plunging the impoverished country of 10 million into civil war. Conté is in his 70s and reportedly suffering from a heart condition.
A friend of mine, Mardi Kendall, with close ties to Guinea is writing up what she has heard from her friends there, I will add that to this diary when I recieve it [now added below]. One of her friends lost a 12-year-old brother in the violence.
Guinea: The Forgotten Country by Mardi Kendall
I have been watching and helping my friends in Guinea, West Africa for many years, as I struggle to set up a documentary about a country few have heard of. When I first went there in 2000, the overall cultural verve and exuberance were palatable, and I longed to show the world these proud people surviving in a despotic regime never knowing where the next meal would come from, but surviving like grass that finds its way up through the pavement.
In the last two weeks, that fragile balance fell apart. The entire country has risen up to topple the regime of President Lansana Conte, and every man, woman, child, union official, and miner, has taken to the streets in protest, even though street protests were outlawed. They marched because their staple food, rice, has been too expensive to buy for a long time, and education and medical care are out of reach.
Conte has been president since 1984, when his military took control. He maintains power through the military, and has done nothing for Guinea, while his many wives and children thrive in luxury. In every book I’ve read about Africa, it has said that Guinea could be the richest country there, as it has copious amount of bauxite, iron ore, water for agriculture, gold, and diamonds.
Yet it took the slaughter of dozens of people for this situation to even make the news on the Internet. On Monday, in cities and villages all over Guinea the people of Guinea took to the streets in the thousands. Their main demand was for the aging and very ill president to step down. Many crowds were composed largely of women and children. And all over Guinea, the military fired into the crowds.
I have been speaking daily with my friends there, and sending all the money I can muster to keep them alive. My friend Idrissa Sylla told me that they were living like animals, with no water, food or electricity, in horrible unsanitary conditions. It has been stiflingly hot. They have been cooped up in their houses, too afraid to move. Then they couldn’t contain themselves anymore and flooded out into the streets, even as President Conte steadfastly maintained that God put him into office and that others should wait their turn.
Idrissa was shot in the leg, and his little brother of twelve was shot in the heart. Yesterday, as Idrissa struggled to find medicine for his festering leg, they went to the morgue to find his brother’s little body, stepping over the dead and the blood, amidst the crowds of wailing and weeping relatives.
Idrissa has only recently gotten out of jail, where he was tortured. He went there for demanding that a friend receive a passport, that it was his right. His family found a visiting lawyer from Senegal to get him out, and again, my pitifully small donation was the difference between life and death. Idrissa’s best friend died just after he too was released from prison, broken and starving from his treatment there.
I fear for my friend’s sanity. It is too much for one person to bear, and yet his story is being repeated all over Guinea. While we have Iraq endlessly battered into our brains, people like Idrissa are quietly being broken, and “leaders” like Conte are allowed to thrive.
This is the third strike by the people in a year, and Guinea is supposed to be the bulwark of stability for the region, which has seen wars in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea-Bissau.
I know we are overloaded with the insanity of the world at every step, but a whole country brave enough to die and starve and stand up to tyranny? This should not be overlooked.
I’m a sick pup and even I can’t make puns about machine-guns and children. All I’ve got is this hilarious quote on a related subject from Jonah:
http://tinyurl.com/2fn4w4
“The 11th Commandment for liberals seems to be, “Thou shalt not intervene out of self-interest.” Intervening in civil wars for humanitarian reasons is OK, but meddling for national security reasons is not. This would explain why liberals supported interventions in civil wars in Yugoslavia and Somalia but think being in one in Iraq is the height of folly.”
If the US military weren’t flung from here to kingdom come, a situation like Guinea would be a slam dunk for a US-backed UN. Instead of a fairy-tale popular uprising against an evil dictator, there seems to be a real popular uprising against an evil dictator. Something it seems one would be able to support.
I don’t think Jonah has any idea what “national interest” actually means.
Pinko:
I’m not sure you’re really giving enough credit to the people of Guinea. If the unions succeed in reaching an agreement where a good chunk of state power devolves to a prime minister of their choosing, then that will presumably be a substantial gain. And if they can pull that off, then they will have succeeded with an amazingly small amount of bloodshed as such things go. And the people there will have managed this without losing any of the moral high ground.
Things rarely work out that neatly though. And of course, it would be helpful if the people of Guinea could appeal to the UN to put pressure on the regime, and if, in general, the world community was a bit less blasé about letting such situations develop in the first place. But I don’t think the US military is really what’s required here. As a rule, the less external interference, the better. A US with some moral credibility could conceivably be helpful though, but then, those are thin on the ground these days too.
Intuitively, this does seem like a situation where a fairly minimal amount of aid to make sure there’s enough food in the country, followed by whatever assistance might be required in improving their agriculture, would go a long way — though my intuitions on appropriate forms of international aid probably aren’t the most reliable guide one might choose.
I wasn’t really expecting a US military mission, more the US having the werewithall to back a UN force or delegation for elections and having the ability to back it up with a small force if necessary. Seeing as I think we don’t even have this, and that even greater atrocities such as Darfur go relatively ignored, it is just a very sorry state of things, and it would be terrible to see soemthing like what is happenign in Guinea be snuffed out.
plover’s point about the world being “less blase about letting such situations develop in the first place” is extremely important. Situations like the one described by Mardi Kendall could be attributed to any random citizen in most of the nations in Africa in any year. The Congo still remains a largely bankrupt country, although the elections were a step in some small way toward an accountable government. The main problem of extensive corruption throughout all layers of the government will likely plague the Congo (and Guinea) for a long time.
I don’t know about Guinea, but in the Congo there is essentially no higher level education available to those who aren’t already wealthy. Bribery and corruption is a simple fact of life and it is accepted that it always will be. I am no expert and I have no idea how one would fix a system like this.
In terms of foreign aid, it can be safely said that Mobutu just took it all. I would not be surprised if a similar situation was happening in Guinea. Altruism is a rare trait and gets obliterated by money.
I forgot my main point: nobody cares about Africa. Nobody cares enough to do more than provide humanitarian aid and spend large amounts of money on stupid democracy promotion parties that don’t do anything. I’m looking at you USAID.
The food aid is important but isn’t enough. It just supports the situation while saving the people from utter misery. They float in that limbo stage just above utter misery.
It looks like Conte has agreed to cede some powers to the prime minister.
Lilian Friedberg at My Left Wing turns out to be a drummer with close ties to Guinea.
She has a post about the strike, but the one I most strongly suggest taking a look at is the one she has on her time spent in Guinea (many pictures).
this is really really sad considering this is 2007 and not 1895.
i second chuckles’ point and would like to expand it a little bit. no one really cares about poor people(the world over, except possibly LatAm and sweden), because most everyone who can give a damn is being screwed over. it’s hard enough for them to survive that it’s not really worth the extra heartache thinking about what is going on in the world at large.
if even half a percent of the money spent on filling the accounts of the likes of lockheed martin was spent instead on real (as in no strings attached) humanitarian aid, the world would be a much better place for many many more people.
In general, I agree with Chuckles about the food aid. However, as I understand it, there is considerable land suitable for agriculture that is not being used, and Guinea also currently imports a lot of food, especially rice — which makes food more expensive for the people there than even the general level of corruption would normally make it. Thus my emphasis on giving them the space to get their agriculture working, though, of course, this is predicated on the current regime removing whatever is impeding that from happening in the first place. For all I know, they like importing food because its easier to tax that way or something.
Pinko:
I suspect we’re saying something very similar. I’m just cautious about putting the military near the top of even the rhetorical toolbox. The instinct that boots-on-the-ground intervention, even from the UN, will help in these kinds of circumstances seems to me one that has to be resisted in any general sense, though there may be concrete reasons in any particular one.
It strikes me as much better from the standpoint of self-determination if the people of a given country find their own way to deal with the issues of power in thay country. I do think there should be a way for them to appeal to the UN though if that is what think is required.
I suppose I’m just reacting to your choosing the US military as the locus of your complaint, where I would choose the credibility and effectiveness of the UN, which is currently from the lack of any meaningful support from the US (when it is not being actively undermined by the US as in the Israel/Lebanon conflict) both because of US unilateralism and US loss of moral standing, and the dithery paralysis as regards Darfur. The situation in Darfur seems to indicate that whatever was learned from Rwanda, it either wasn’t the right thing or wasn’t enough.
I had a discussion about some similar things over at fish’s a few months ago. It was even founded on a Jonah dropping that included a statement parallel to the one Snag quoted above.
The strike has ended.
The new PM has yet to be named though — there apparently is no obvious choice — but it seems fairly clear that the people and unions aren’t going to stand for one they don’t feel they can trust.
Here’s hoping things continue to go well.
yeah, p-bird. there’s shortage enough of the good stuff, and it’s not because the media dont report it.
In related news:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8N8C7I00.htm
now that’s heartwarming, chuckles. absolutely delightful!
Wheee! Bullets for everyone!