Guinean students and workers wrote a manifesto against the visit of the President of Guinea-Bissau to Portugal from Monday to Wednesday, accusing the Portuguese head of state and government of “cleaning up” the image of Humaro Sissoko Embalo.
In a letter addressed to the President of the Republic, the President of the Assembly of the Republic and the Prime Minister of Portugal, the Firkidja di Púbis movement, which brings together Guinean activists, students and workers in Portugal, expresses its “deep outrage at the support that the Portuguese State has given to Humaro Sissoko Embalo.”
Subscribers define Sissoko as “an authoritarian president and leader of a dictatorship seeking to revive itself after the sovereign people of Guinea-Bissau declared the beginning of its end with the devastating defeat in the last legislative elections of the political parties accompanying them in their project to eliminate the democratic freedoms that are integral achievement of the Guinean people.”
“For three and a half years, our people have been forced to live under political persecution through the use of institutions of justice fundamental to any state that wants to be based on law and democracy,” with “kidnappings and beatings of citizens who dare to oppose systematic violations of basic civil rights and freedoms, namely freedom of expression, press, trade unions, demonstrations and assembly,” they write.
During this period, the document continues, there were “armed robberies of the headquarters of a political party, the media and the homes of political commentators and party leaders who do not support the dictatorship of the president, publicly presented as the only leader in Guinea-Bissau.”
And during this time of “limitation of freedoms” in Guinea-Bissau, “the Portuguese state, through its President of the Republic and Prime Minister, actively participated in the hygiene of the authoritarian President of Guinea, Humaro Sissoko Embalo, whom the President so strongly [português]Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa as Prime Minister [português]António Costa helped make his presence known to the world with his trips to Bissau in 2021 and 2022 respectively.”
Signatories of the manifesto criticize the fact that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and António Costa received Sissoko in Portugal without a legal decision from the Supreme Court of Guinea-Bissau on the results of the second round of the 2020 presidential elections.
“Today, faced with reports of attempts by Oumaro Sissoko Embalo to cause a political crisis that gives him the opportunity to dissolve the National People’s Assembly and thus dissolve the government elected by the people of Guinea-Bissau, after just two months of taking office, even the President of the Republic is being received by persons holding the highest positions in the Portuguese state,” the letter further states.
The authors state that “workers, students and the Guinean people are attentive and reject” the “complicity” of the President of the Republic and Prime Minister of Portugal “with the leader of an absolutist and anti-democratic political project in the implementation of his populist program.” , which he calls “aggressive diplomacy” aimed solely at distracting Guineans and our state’s international partners from their attempts to make it impossible to create a stable and democratic governance structure.”
On October 10, the President of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoko Embalo, announced that he would pay a state visit to Portugal from Monday to Wednesday.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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