Senegalese authorities ordered exiled Guinean opposition members to cancel a planned meeting in Dakar on Thursday to denounce human rights violations in their country, according to one of the event’s organizers.
The meeting was supposed to mark the two-year anniversary of the disappearance of activists Oumar Sylla, better known as Fonike Mengue, and Mamadou Billo Bah, both critics of authorities in Conakry.
Abductions and forced disappearances have multiplied in the west African country since General Mamady Doumbouya came to power in a 2021 coup.
The hotel where the meeting was to take place contacted one of the organisers, Alseny Farinta Camara, on Wednesday evening, informing him they could no longer provide a venue, shortly before he was contacted by the police.
Camara, coordinator of the Guinea chapter of civil society organisation Tournons La Page (Turn the Page), said he was then “invited” to the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) headquarters Thursday morning and told to cancel the event “so as not to create a diplomatic issue”.
A Senegalese police spokesperson confirmed to AFP that “for diplomatic reasons, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted the Ministry of the Interior to ensure the meeting did not take place”.
At a press conference in Paris, Ibrahima Diallo, a senior figure in the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), the group to which Sylla and Mengue belonged, described the cancellation as “regrettable,” noting that “Senegal has always been a place of asylum.”
Under Doumbouya, several political parties and media outlets have been suspended, demonstrations were banned in 2022 and repressed, and numerous opposition and civil society leaders have been arrested, convicted or forced into exile.
By Agencies
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