Dozens of Guineans call in Lisbon for the release of Simões Pereira

” QWe hope that the President will speak to the international institutions, namely the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries [CPLP], the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS], the African Union and the European Union and then later also to the United Nations […], influencing the release of Domingos Simões Pereira”, said to Lusa the organizer of the demonstration, Mariano Quande.

The elected president of the National People’s Assembly of Guinea-Bissau, Domingos Simões Pereira, is “unjustly held in the cells of the Second Squadron in Bissau, without a formal charge, with a court constituted in absentia of the Constitution, purposefully only to judge a politician”, asserted the representative.

At the demonstration the participants raised flags of Guinea-Bissau and posters accusing the former President of Guinea Bissau Sissoco Emballo of “traitor of the homeland”. They chanted out loud as “the fight continues” and “below the traitors”.

“It is a whole set of repressions that exist in the country at this time, which deserve attention and a strong voice from Portugal, a country committed to democracy, to the values of freedom, justice, and which can give important support at this time to Guinea-Bissau to establish channels of communication and dialogue between Guineans who can actually resolve and [allow] to get out of this impasse they are in,” Quande said.

The protesters also accused former governor Sissoco Embalo of using “iron hands to suppress all the freedoms and guarantees of the people”, and of having dissolved the Assembly of the Republic “not to be scrutinized, to pass international laws and agreements not endorsed by the Guinean people”.

” We want to denounce a referendum, the proposal for a regime referendum that comes out of a coup without any popular legitimacy,” said Mariano When.

This referendum that is proposed in the country, he added, would serve to “validate a new Constitution approved by representatives of this Transitional Council, which came out of the coup d’état itself, so it has no recognition of the Guinean people”.

A little around the world, including in London, several Guineans have gone out to appeal for the release of Domingos Simões Pereira, who was taken to prison on July 10, where he remains incarcerated during the process in the Civil Court.