Clashes between supporters during a football match on Sunday December 1 caused at least “56 dead and several injured” in N'Zérékoré, in southeastern Guinea, the government said on Monday. “It all started with a challenge to a decision by the referee. Supporters then invaded the playing area,” a witness told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety. Angry supporters subsequently vandalized and set fire to the N'Zérékoré police station, according to witnesses.
“There are a hundred dead,” a doctor from the regional hospital even told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “Bodies are lined up as far as the eye can see in the hospital. Others are lying on the floor in the corridors. The morgue is full,” he assured.
The events in N'Zérékoré, first presented as clashes between supporters, were triggered by the expulsion of a player at the end of the game between the local club and that of Labé in the final of a tournament organized in the honor of the head of the junta, General Mamadi Doumbouya, witnesses said. The latter is came to power after a coup in September 2021 and has since become president.
Witnesses indicate that some attacked the official platform, provoking the intervention of security forces. “The demonstrations of dissatisfaction with the refereeing decisions led to stone throwing by supporters, causing fatal stampedes,” said the government in a press release read on national television, which also assured (the) population “that investigations will be carried out to establish responsibilities linked to this unfortunate event.”
A little earlier, Prime Minister Bah Oury had deplored on “the incidents that punctuated” this match. “(…) The government is monitoring developments in the situation and reiterates its call for calm so that hospital services are not hampered in providing first aid to the injured. (…]”, he wrote on the social network.
Such tournaments have multiplied in recent weeks in Guinea, in what are seen as events in support of a possible candidacy of Mr. Doumbouya in the next presidential election, scheduled for 2025. The junta had initially committed, under the international pressure, to give way to elected civilians before the end of 2024. She has since made it known that she would break her promise.
Several of Mr. Doumbouya's representatives recently said they were in favor of his candidacy in the next presidential election. But the “transition charter” established by the junta shortly after the coup requires that no member of the junta can run “neither in national elections nor in local elections”. The authorities indicated at the end of September that all the votes leading to the return of constitutional order would be held in 2025.
The junta seeks to silence all forms of dissent, banning demonstrations and critical media. Many opposition leaders have been arrested, indicted before judges or driven into exile. At the beginning of July, two leaders of a dissolved citizens' movement which demanded the return of civilians to power disappeared.
