Reviled internationally for gunning down unarmed pro-democracy protesters last month, the military government of Guinea has gained a lifeline — thanks to a US$7 billion mining deal it says it has obtained with a Chinese company.
Human rights groups decried the deal, while China kept a low profile, not confirming Tuesday’s announcement by Guinea, a West African country led by Captain Moussa “Dadis” Camara, who seized power in a coup in December.
“There’s a real risk that these investments could entrench and embolden and enrich an already abusive government,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of Human Rights Watch’s Business and Human Rights Program.
Chris Alden, an international policy expert at the London School of Economics, said Camara “apparently pulled the rabbit out of the hat for this regime.”
“We’re talking about a desperate captain who ran a coup, who’s actively being delegitimized,” Alden said.
The deal gives Guinea’s military junta a major potential source of revenue even as it faces isolation from the international community after soldiers opened fire on Sept. 28 at demonstrators opposed to Camara running in elections planned for January.
A local human rights group said 157 protesters died while the government put the death toll at 57. Witnesses say soldiers also raped women in the streets.
Guinea announced the agreement on Tuesday, a national day of mourning for those killed by the troops at Guinea’s national stadium.
“This could have been a good coup for the government, but all this is botched by the slaughtering of our innocent brothers and sisters by the military,” Abdoul Kadr Diallo, an engineering student at the University of Conakry, said of the Chinese deal.
The US has called for Camara to step down, while former colonial power France has said it can no longer work with him. The African Union already had suspended Guinea’s membership following the coup.
Ganesan said the mining deal’s timing is “unfortunate.”
“It certainly sends the wrong message at the wrong time,” the rights advocate said. “After widespread abuses have taken place in Guinea, for the government to be able to tout a US$7 billion deal with the China International Fund says that they are above criticism.”
Guinea is the world’s largest producer of bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and produces diamonds and gold.
Guinean Mines Minister Mahmoud Thiam said that the Chinese company “will be a strategic partner in all mining projects.”
Thiam also said that new power-generating plants, railway links and planes for both international and local air transportation are part of the deal.
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