Hundreds of people marched through Guinea Bissau’s capital on Friday, denouncing last month’s military coup and calling for the release of opposition leaders, as regional heads prepare to meet on Sunday to discuss the deepening crisis.
Demonstrators clashed with security forces in Bissau, burning tyres and demanding the release of Domingos Simoes Pereira, leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, who was detained during the coup, according to relatives and security sources.
Army officers removed President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on 26 November, a day before the electoral commission was expected to announce the results of legislative and presidential polls. The junta installed Major General Horta Inta a as interim leader the following day.
Ecowas leaders are due to meet in Abuja, Nigeria, to consider the situation and weigh possible sanctions, Sierra Leone’s foreign minister Timothy Musa Kabba said last week.
“We do not recognise the transitional government,” civil society activist Vigario Luis Balanta told reporters, urging a general strike and a week of civil disobedience. The military authorities did not immediately comment.
On Tuesday, the junta released a 12 month transitional charter that bars Inta a and his appointed prime minister from running in future elections, presenting the document two weeks after suspending the constitution.
“We are the youth and we are the future of this country,” protester Antonio Sami said. “We will never accept our sovereignty being undermined.”
The takeover is the ninth coup in West and Central Africa in the past five years, continuing a cycle of political instability in Guinea Bissau, a country long plagued by military interference and notorious as a transit hub for cocaine traffickers.