Crackdown on Guinea opposition

Conte says he needs to stay on to protect peace

By Alhassan Sillah in Conakry

The military in Guinea are alleged to have started a crack down on opposition supporters campaigning against a referendum due, on 11 November, to decide on a controversial third term for president Lansana Conte.

The opposition alliance, CODEM, said 10 of their supporters detained early this week by the army, but later released, have been badly injured and are hospitalized.

They say the military have now set free a total of 62 people arrested in the town of Kankan, 600km east of the capital, Conakry.

The alliance are threatening to boycott the vote which, if approved would, it says, make Mr Conte president for life.

Mr Conte was elected as a civilian president in 1993 after he had already served 10 years as the country's military head.

The country's parliamentary speaker, Bubacar Biro Diallo, has also fiercely criticised the referendum plan to change the constitution, calling it illegal.

Convoy stopped

But the government says that the opposition had failed to appreciate that the nation was just coming out of war and people needed peace above all.

Interior minister Moussa Solano told the press on Wednesday that the security forces had broken up the march because it was held againt the ban on street protests.

Opposition leaders have been travelling in a convoy through the eastern provinces this week to drum up support for the boycott of the referendum.

An opposition spokesman here in Conakry, Dr Mohamed Diane, told the BBC that soldiers prevented the convoy from entering Kankan allegedly on the orders of the governor of the region.

Opposition supporters who attempted to arrange safe passage for their officials were allegedly manhandled by the military.

Manhandled

Several of them were arrested, while others sustained injuries in a scuffle with the soldiers, according to Dr Diane.

He added that Kankan has become a no-go area for opposition supporters, as the town is now being manned by armed soldiers.

Dr Diane said he did not know what had happened to the opposition leaders who were in the convoy when it was stopped.

Meanwhile, both the United States and the European Union have warned that Guinea risks losing vital aid if the proposed referendum runs contrary to the country's constitution.

Although the foreign powers did not refer to this, the constitutionality of the referendum has been questioned because it is being held in terms of a presidential decree, rather than parliamentary approval.

The 1992 constitution, which ushered in multi-party democracy after 26 years of former President Sekou Toure's dictatorship, limits the presidential mandate to not more than two five-year terms.