How did the match degenerate?
The local team faces that of Labé on a dirt pitch at the 3-Avril stadium, a dilapidated enclosure in which thousands of people crowd according to testimonies. The match features a Mamadi Doumbouya trophy, the general who took power by force in 2021. The game became tense in the last quarter of an hour, with the expulsion of two players from Labé, said Saliou Diallo , coach of Labé, in the media.
One of the two ministers in the stands intervenes directly with the referee and obtains the cancellation of a red card. At 0-0, while the added time had expired, the referee awarded a penalty to N’Zérékoré. “It was when everyone was trying to understand what was happening that stones started to rain all over the field,” says the coach.
Why so many deaths?
“Panic quickly set in, leading to an uncontrollable crowd movement,” reports a witness, speaking on condition of anonymity. Security forces respond to stone throwing with tear gas. The open-air space is enclosed. Videos show panicked bystanders scaling walls to escape, including climbing on top of each other. Testimonies suggest two possible outcomes, a big one and a small one. The large gate is blocked by security force vehicles, says a local collective of human rights organizations. The officials’ cars hit spectators to evacuate their passengers, assures the collective.
“The little door was the only recourse (….) With the stampede, the jostling, many lost their lives,” said Labé’s coach. “It’s the first time in my life (that I’ve seen) more than 30 bodies lined up in a stadium.”
How many deaths are there?
Parallels are drawn with the massacre of 2009 when the repression of an opposition rally in a stadium in Conakry left at least 156 dead, according to an international commission of inquiry.
The videos show lines of inert bodies in what appear to be medical centers. Doctors spoke to AFP on Sunday of dozens of deaths. It was only the next day that the government cited the “provisional” figure of 56 deaths.
With 56 deaths, it is the deadliest tragedy in a football stadium since the stampede which left 135 dead in Indonesia in October 2022, according to an AFP database.
But the figure of 56 is in doubt. A source close to the emergency services said, on condition of anonymity, to have “seen with (his) own eyes 84 bodies deposited in the morgue, 24 (other people) died in the emergency room”.
The N’Zérékoré collective speaks of 135 deaths based on a census carried out among witnesses, parents or at the burial sites. An organization of Guineans in the diaspora cites 300 deaths.
These attempts at counting, numerous in a poor country with a turbulent history, always come up against an opacity, whether deliberately maintained or not.
A figure in the junta, Dansa Kourouma, accused some of trying to “exploit this moment of sadness to settle scores, accuse the authorities or, worse still, exacerbate community divisions”.
What impact other than human?
The match was organized by an “Alliance of Young Forest Leaders”, believed to support the ruling junta. Guineans are crazy about football. The meeting is part of the popular gatherings which have multiplied. No one doubts that they are used to promote a candidacy of the head of the junta for a future presidential election postponed to an unknown date.
Critics denounce the organization’s negligence and the inconsiderate use of tear gas by the security services, chronically accused of excessive and unpunished use of force. Calls for an investigation proliferate, with serious doubts about its posterity in light of precedent. General Doumbouya announced the formation of a commission of inquiry “to rule on the causes of this tragedy and determine responsibilities”.
Among others, the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution, one of the last dissident voices to still be heard, said it held “Mamadi Doumbouya and his government (for) directly responsible for this catastrophe”. He attributes to General Doumbouya “a cynical exploitation of sport”.
Par Le360 Africa (with AFP)
03/12/2024 at 7:41 p.m.
