Guinea-Bissau’s Military Takeover Highlights The Nation’s Sorry History Of Coups And A Deepening Crisis Across The Region

Soldiers patrol the streets in Guinea-Bissau on Nov. 26, 2025. Patrick Meinhardt/AFP via Getty Images

BY JOHN JOSEPH CHIN

ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR OF 

STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGY,

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Army generals in Guinea-Bissau seized power on Nov. 26, 2025 – the eve of a scheduled official declaration of the winner in the West African nation’s presidential election.

Alleging a destabilization plot by unnamed politicians and drug lords, the military suspended the electoral process and blocked the results of a contest that both the now former president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, and the opposition candidate had claimed victory in.

General Horta Inta-a, the head of the presidential guard, was subsequently sworn in as “transitional” leader and Ilídio Vieira Té, a close Embaló ally, was appointed prime minister. The timing of the development and Embaló’s connection to the new government figures have led domestic opposition groups and some West African political leaders to claim the coup was staged to facilitate Embaló’s continued rule by proxy.

Whatever the veracity of such claims, the events point to both a deepening regional crisis of democracy and the inability of Guinea-Bissau to escape its coup-prone history. Indeed, as a scholar who has compiled and updated a dataset of coup types and documented their history in Guinea-Bissau since its independence from Portugal in 1974, I believe the country is caught in a classic coup trap whereby poverty and coups d’etat are mutually reinforcing.

The Sahel coup belt keeps expanding

The events in Guinea-Bissau reflect a so-called polycrisis for countries in and around the Sahel belt, sandwiched between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. This region has, since 2020, become the global epicenter of both terrorism and coups – so much so that it is sometimes dubbed the Sahel “coup belt”.

The events in Guinea-Bissau, which is located just south of the Sahel region, represent the 11th successful coup in Africa since 2020 – and the second successful one in 2025 after the military takeover in Madagascar in October following a wave of Gen Z protests.

Indeed, nearly three-quarters of all coup attempts in the world since 2020 have taken place in West Africa or the Sahel. The region accounts for an even higher share of successful coups since 2020. This unprecedented cluster of coups comes in a region that accounts for less than 10% of both Africa’s population and the number of states in the world.

The Sahel region is responsible for around 75% of recent coups

There have been many reasons for the various coups in the Sahel since 2020. Takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, for example, were driven in part by growing terrorist insurgencies, Russian disinformation and rising anti-French sentiment.

By contrast, data from the conflict monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, or ACLED, shows very little conflict or protest in Guinea-Bissau leading up to the coup. Instead, events appear to lie in political opportunism in the wake of an election marred by flaws and allegations of illegitimacy.

Guinea-Bissau’s ‘coup trap’

Before the latest military takeover, Guinea-Bissau was already the fourth-most coup-prone state in sub-Saharan Africa, having suffered five failed coup attempts and three successful ones since 1974. Coups toppled the single-party regime of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde in 1980, the authoritarian regime of Kumba Yala in 2003 and overthrew democracy and installed an indirect military regime in 2012. Meanwhile, a failed coup attempt in 1998 sparked the country’s only civil war.

Since 2020, Guinea-Bissau had suffered one bona fide coup attempt, in February 2022, in addition to a mutiny in late 2022 that Embaló condemned as a coup attempt. The coup of November 2025 was itself foreshadowed by an alleged coup plot that was revealed at the end of October, when a number of senior officers were arrested.

All of that suggests a feature of this type of instability: Coups beget more coups. In fact, seven of the nine nations that have suffered successful coups since 2020 had already suffered a successful coup within the previous 20 years.

And whereas nearly 30% of nations with coups since 2005 suffered a coup again between 2020 and 2025, states that lacked a recent coup history – even poor countries in Africa – were much less likely to suffer a coup after 2020.

Coup as a feature, not a bug

Following the 2022 coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau, Embaló had moved to consolidate the government under his leadership and reduce constraints on the executive. Indeed, data on three key dimensions of democracy shows that electoral contestation, voter participation and executive constraints have all declined significantly in Guinea-Bissau since.

The Varieties of Democracy project, which surveys experts to measure different levels of democracy, declared in 2022 that Guinea-Bissau had become an “electoral autocracy” – a term to denote governments that are elected through unfair and fraudulent means and go on to rule in an authoritarian manner.

The nation has continued to slide into autocracy since then.

Embaló used an alleged coup plot in December 2023 as a pretext to dissolve the opposition-dominated legislature. The country has not had a sitting legislature since.

Earlier in 2025, Embaló went back on his promise to step down at the end of his first term and instead announced he was running for a second term. Given that Embaló had barred the main opposition party from running, many feared he might try to steal the election, if necessary, much like Paul Biya is alleged to have done in nearby Cameroon in October 2025.

Not a ‘good coup,‘ but a ‘veto coup’

When asked about recent coups in Africa, Rwandan President Paul Kagame insisted that some coups – those that oppose corruption and bad governance – are “good coups.” Though scholars have debated how frequent so-called good coups have been in Africa, there is little doubt that the recent case better fits the classic pattern of a so-called “veto coup,” meant to prevent the winner of the election from taking office.

Indeed, the presence of prominent Embaló allies in the interim Guinea-Bissau government lends credence to opposition cries of foul play. The new government’s promise of democratic elections in a year should likewise be treated with skepticism. The promised electoral timetable has not been kept in any other recent coup case in the Sahel, where juntas remain entrenched.

As such, even if Guinea-Bissau was becoming increasingly autocratic already, the latest takeover is likely a cure worse than the disease. Whether the international community that has condemned the coup – from the United Nations to the African Union to the Economic Community of West African Nations – is willing or able to take credible steps to help guide Guinea-Bissau back to constitutional rule looks uncertain, given the recent example of other coup-hit nations across the continent.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Guinea-Bissau’s President Issues A Decree Dissolving The Opposition-Controlled Parliament

FILE - Guinea Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo speaks at the Peace Forum on Nov. 11, 2022 in Paris. A shootout in Guinea-Bissau’s capital Friday was an attempted coup, Embalo said Sunday Dec. 3, 2023 after a meeting with security forces, confirming fears over the latest threat to democracy in the increasingly volatile and coup-hit West Africa. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool, File)

BY CHINEDU ASADU AND SAMBU ASSANA

BISSAU, GUINEA-BISSAU (AP) — Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo issued a decree Monday dissolving the nation’s opposition-controlled parliament, less than six months after it was reconstituted following a similar move by the president in 2022.

Embalo cited last week’s shootout between troops loyal to him and forces controlled by the parliament, which he described as a failed coup.

“The date for holding the next legislative elections will be set in due time in accordance with the provisions of … the Constitution,” the decree stated. “This Presidential Decree comes into force immediately.”

On Monday night, Embalo deployed soldiers at the headquarters of the state television and radio as he sought to change the heads of the broadcast stations said to be loyal to the parliament. “Everything is going well in Bissau,” the nation’s leader said as he attempted to allay fears of yet another political crisis in the capital city. “Democratic achievements are respected and maintained.”










The new executive order referred to the “seriousness” of last week’s shootout in the capital, Bissau, between members of the Presidential Palace Battalion and the National Guard as the former tried to rearrest two ministers under investigation for alleged corruption who had been released from custody by the latter.





The leadership of the parliament rejected the president’s decree Monday, noting that the constitution states that parliament cannot be dissolved in the first 12 months after an election.

“If this situation happens, regardless of the mechanism used, we are in the presence of a subversion of the democratic order or a constitutional coup d’état,” Domingos Simões Pereira, president of the parliament, told reporters.

It is the second time in less than two years that Embalo has dissolved the parliament. Three months after surviving a coup attempt in February 2022, the Guinea Bissau leader did the same thing, citing “unresolvable differences” with the legislature.

Guinea-Bissau’s semi-presidential system limits the president’s powers by allowing the majority party in the parliament to appoint the Cabinet. As a result, the National Guard — which is under the Ministry of Interior — is largely controlled by the opposition-dominated parliament, while the Presidential Palace Battalion is loyal to Embalo.

Embalo, a former army general, was declared the winner of a December 2019 runoff presidential election, which his opponent contested. Tensions have remained between him and the coalition of opposition groups that won the majority in Guinea-Bissau’s parliament in June when the parliament was reconstituted.

Last week’s shooting incident lasted from Thursday night until Friday morning and happened while the president was attending the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Upon his return, he dismissed Victor Tchongo, the head of the National Guard and said Tchongo hadn’t acted alone when he asked members of the guard to release the officials.

The bid to release the officials — Economy and Finance Minister Suleimane Seidi and Treasury Secretary António Monteiro — “clearly revealed the complicity of grand corruption with certain political interests” and sows “strong evidence of political complicity,” Embalo said in the decree.

It was not clear if the parliament would continue to sit despite the presidential decree. Pereira insisted that the assembly remains in place because its dissolution is unconstitutional.

Since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau, a country of 2 million people, has endured continued political turmoil, experiencing four coups and more than a dozen attempted coups that have often been connected with the government’s fight against drug trafficking.

Guinea-Bissau became known as a transit point for cocaine between Latin America and Europe in the 2000s when traffickers profited from corruption and weak law enforcement.

Last week’s shootout is the fourth attempted or successful military takeover of power in West and Central Africa in the past six months, including last week’s attacks on military barracks and prisons in Sierra Leone. It further raises tensions in the once-politically stable region where coups have surged, with eight military takeovers since 2020.
___

Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria

For Former Rebel In West Africa, Her Allegiance Still Lies With Russia

Ms. Gomes at her home in Bissau, the capital. As a lawmaker, she has focused on improving Guinea-Bissau’s health care system.Credit...Image: Ricci Shryock/New York Times

BY RICCI SHRYOCK

BISSAU, GUINEA BISSAU (NEW YORK TIMES) -- The Kremlin armed a generation of freedom fighters in Africa, like Joana Gomes, who helped Guinea-Bissau win liberation. So her decision to take Moscow’s side in its war with Ukraine was never in doubt.

When her country needed arms to fight its bitter liberation war against its colonizer, it was the Soviet Union that provided them.

When her country needed medical workers to tend to the war’s wounded, it sent her to train as a nurse — in the Soviet Union.

So when Joana Gomes, now a lawmaker in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, heard about the war between Russia and Ukraine, her allegiance was clear from the start: It would be with Russia, although she sometimes slips and still calls it the Soviet Union.

“It was with their arms that we won our independence,” Ms. Gomes, 72, said on a recent rainy afternoon, cooking lunch at home in the capital, Bissau. “If not for them, even today we would not have our independence.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, some voices were absent from the global concert of condemnation, many of them African. Sixteen of the 35 countries that abstained from the United Nations vote to condemn Russia’s actions were in Africa, as was one of the five that voted no, Eritrea.

For many African countries, ties with Moscow run deep. The Soviet Union supported many African liberation wars, supplying training, education and weapons to freedom fighters like Ms. Gomes. Nearly six decades later, she hasn’t forgotten.

In 1964, when she stepped off a plane in the U.S.S.R., the first thing Ms. Gomes’s sponsors did was hand her gloves, a hat and a heavy coat.

She was 14. Until that point, she had never left Guinea-Bissau, a small West African country that won independence from Portugal in 1974 after a decade-long war.

But her young life had already been filled with drama, violence and tragedy. Her father, an outspoken proponent of the liberation fight, was murdered by one of his comrades when Ms. Gomes was 13.

Heartbroken, she set out for the forested front lines of the war. She had decided that the only man who could help her obtain justice for her father was Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the liberation movement and one of Africa’s most iconic anticolonial philosophers and military leaders.

Her three-day march to meet Mr. Cabral in the hide-out used by him and his guerrilla fighters paid off. The accused assassin was arrested.

But the fight against the Portuguese was just beginning, and Ms. Gomes was thrust into one of the continent’s most brutal independence wars.

When Mr. Cabral, a founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, or P.A.I.G.C., sent hundreds of Guinean youth for training in the U.S.S.R., Ms. Gomes was among them. When she returned five years later, a skilled nurse fluent in Russian, the war had intensified.

She worked long days on the front lines at makeshift clinics, alongside her comrades and doctors from Cuba, binding soldiers’ wounds and saving the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire. On one occasion, she pulled shrapnel from the chest of a woman who was eight months pregnant, saving both mother and child.

One of her most unforgettable moments came on New Year’s Eve day, as 1972 was ending.

That morning she wore a pink dress instead of military fatigues, as she anticipated a small party to celebrate. She was in a village a few miles from her base camp, ordered to retrieve a fellow soldier recuperating from a chest infection.

But just as the morning’s coffee was beginning to boil on an open fire, Ms. Gomes heard enemy gunfire, and she ran for the cover of the forest. “Maybe this is the time I die,” she recalls thinking to herself. But just then, she tripped, and a small bazooka rocket zoomed above where her head had just been. She did not make it to the New Year’s party, but she did make it out of that ambush alive.

Stephanie J. Urdang, a journalist born in South Africa, spent two months reporting from the front lines of Guinea-Bissau’s liberation war and wrote “Fighting Two Colonialisms: The Women’s Struggle in Guinea-Bissau” about the contributions women like Ms. Gomes made in the fight for independence.

Assigned as nurses, teachers and transporters of food and weapons, the women were trusted to ensure that guerrilla fighters had places to live and food to eat, Ms. Urdang said. But their roles in garnering popular support in the countryside were perhaps even more important.

“People in the villages knew what the Portuguese were doing to them. They knew it through their inability to sell their crops at a just price, they knew it in the way they were taken for forced labor,” Ms. Urdang said.

“So when the P.A.I.G.C. came in and were going to get rid of these oppressors, and then when they saw schools being built, health centers being built and literacy campaigns for people, just a whole lot of services were provided that weren’t there before — there was serious mobilization,” Ms. Urdang said.

After the war was won, thanks in part to that mobilization, Ms. Gomes went back to the Soviet Union, where she trained as a doctor before returning to Guinea-Bissau in 1987 to work in local hospitals.

She became director of the national physical rehabilitation center and later worked as an inspector of health facilities for the Ministry of Health, a start to her government experience.

Then, a few years ago, she decided to once again deploy her medical knowledge on the front lines — of politics, this time, not war.

In 2019 in the country’s rural southwest, during her campaign for a seat in Parliament, Ms. Gomes oversaw an effort to deliver dozens of new beds to a small hospital. She wanted to show she was determined to do something about the dire health care system in Guinea-Bissau, whose citizens have an average life expectancy of 58.

Ms. Gomes won her election, but her efforts to improve a health care system that sits near the bottom in global rankings have run into endemic obstacles.

Since independence, Guinea-Bissau has struggled to find its footing amid both internal fighting and foreign pressures. There have been four coups and many more attempted.

In this country so dominated by water, mangrove swamps and islands, it can seem as if citizens are always waiting for the tide to change so they can get somewhere — the physical tide or the political one.

Ms. Gomes’s small concrete home in Bissau is in a constant state of destruction and reconstruction. So is her country, where citizens have to deal with unreliable hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

Then in May, the president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, dissolved the National Assembly, deepening the country’s cycle of political instability.

With her parliamentary work trying to improve the country’s health care system now on hold, Ms. Gomes has had more time to reflect on the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Her nurse training was in Kyiv, then part of the Soviet Union, and she said she is sympathetic to both sides.

“I spent my youth in Ukraine, I have friends there, I do not want people to suffer. I wish there could be an understanding between Ukraine and Putin,” she said. “I was in a war, I know what war is, I know what it is to suffer in a war.”

But for all the daily struggles that are still part of life in Guinea-Bissau, one hard-fought achievement is still intact: independence.

And the Kremlin’s role in that is still gratefully remembered, and she disagrees with the many who consider the war an act of unjustified Russian aggression.

“Ukraine, why did they want to join NATO?” Ms. Gomes asked. “Russia does not accept that.”

NATO, she noted, “is an enemy of the Soviet Union. If someone is my enemy and I tell my father I am going to their house — to my enemy’s house — is that good?”

In her support of Russia, she is far from alone in Guinea-Bissau, or indeed the wider region, where a whole generation won liberation from colonial oppressors with Soviet aid.

Manuel dos Santos, a former freedom fighter in Guinea-Bissau who has served in various ministerial posts, was also clear about his support. “If I had to take sides in this moment — and I don’t have to — but let’s say I had to, I would say that Russia had been provoked in every way,” he said.

Not far from the National Assembly building in downtown Bissau, at the Guinea-Bissau National Liberation Museum, many Soviet-supplied weapons are displayed.

“I used to have a Kalashnikov. The Portuguese had American weapons,” Mr. Dos Santos said. “It’s as simple as that.”

“I understand the sense of commitment because of what the Soviet Union did,” said Ms. Urdang, the writer. “But that was the Soviet Union. Russia is different now.”

Whichever side they’re on, people in Guinea-Bissau have felt the war’s effects firsthand.

Lines at gas stations were worst this spring, when fuel shortages meant drivers spent hours waiting to fill up. But just recently, prices for buses and taxis increased because of higher energy costs.

Despite her appreciation for the U.S.S.R., Ms. Gomes didn’t embrace its atheism. On a recent Sunday, she got ready to attend one of the three evangelical churches where she worships.

While there, she planned to pray for an end to Guinea-Bissau’s political crises.

She noted she had been fighting for her country since she was a teenager. But now, it felt like all she could do was wait for the tide to change.

“I feel pain, as a former liberation fighter. What did we fight for?” she asked. “Guinea-Bissau, it’s without a government, without anything right now.”

Guinea-Bissau President: ‘Attack On Democracy’ Thwarted

FILE - President of Guinea-Bissau Umaro Sissoco Embalo arrives for a dinner at the Elysee Palace as part of the Paris Peace Forum, in Paris, Nov. 11, 2021. Heavy gunfire erupted Tuesday Feb. 1, 2022 near the Government Palace in Guinea-Bissau's capital, witnesses said, raising fears of a coup attempt in this West African country with a long history of military takeovers. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, file)

BY VAGNER BARBOSA

BISSAU, GUINEA-BISSAU (AP) — Assailants armed with machine guns and AK-47s attacked Guinea-Bissau’s government palace for hours Tuesday while the president and prime minister were inside, but the coup attempt that ultimately failed, the president announced.

The foiled attack came only about two weeks after a military junta overthrew the democratically elected leader of Burkina Faso, underscoring fears that a recent spate of coups is inspiring others in the region.

President Umaro Sissoco Embalo addressed reporters late Tuesday, saying that the “attack on democracy” had come during a government meeting at the building.

“Our republican defense and security forces were able to stop this evil,” Embalo said, adding that the gunfire went on for five hours.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the assault, though the president said it “also has to do with our fight against narco-trafficking.” Guinea-Bissau became known as a transit point for cocaine between Latin America and Europe in the 2000s as traffickers profited from corruption and weak law enforcement.

The 15-nation West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS, already grappling with three other coups in member states over the last 18 months, called Tuesday’s violence a coup attempt and said it was following the situation in Bissau “with great concern.” Portugal’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet that it strongly condemned the attack in its former colony.

Since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has experienced four coup d’etats and more than a dozen attempted coups.

Embalo, a former army general, was declared the winner of the December 2019 runoff vote, though the results were contested by his opponent. Embalo then started forming a new government with support from the military while a Supreme Court election challenge was still pending.

Tuesday’s coup attempt comes amid a wave of military takeovers in West Africa. Since August 2020, soldiers have grabbed power in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Despite international pressure for a return to constitutional rule, none of the military rulers have yet to organize new elections.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, condemned the “terrible multiplication of coups” in the region, which he called “totally unacceptable.”

___ Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Will Elections In Guinea-Bissau End Years Of Political Crisis?

Image: Getty/AFP/Seyllou via DW

On Sunday a new parliament will be elected in Guinea-Bissau. 21 parties are battling for 102 seats. Guineans hope the poll will mark the end of a long period of political crisis in the West African country.

Mozambican diplomat Gabriel Dava has headed the office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Bissau for the past six years. When he talked to DW about the upcoming parliamentary elections in Guinea-Bissau, his relief was evident. "This Sunday will see the end of a difficult diplomatic process. Guinea-Bissau now has the chance for a political new beginning. The time of political standstill is finally coming to an end."

The last few years have been lost time for Guinea-Bissau, Dava says. State structures practically ceased to exist. He now hopes that "with a newly elected parliament, the state's ability to function will be restored."

The political standstill dates back to 2015, with the three most important power entities — government, parliament and president— blocking each other.

The drama began when Guinea-Bissau's president Jose Mario Vaz, known as Jomav, removed his archenemy Domingos Simoes Pereira as head of government. This came shortly after Pereira had lost the absolute majority in parliament because 15 members of his own party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) turned their backs on him. According to Pereira's supporters, this was a carefully prepared plot, hatched well in advance.

When President Vaz then appointed a parliamentarian from the ranks of the largest oppposition party, the Party of Social Renewal (PRS), to head the government, the conflict escalated. Parliamentary speaker Cipriano Kassama had the 15 PAIGC rebels thrown out of parliament and rejected all cooperation with the president and all heads of government installed by him. Since then, votes on new laws or budgetary proposals have remained on ice. Parliament is paralysed and, until today, Guinea-Bissau has not had a functioning government.

Who's leading the race?

Of the 21 parties contesting the election, the PAIGC, PRS and a new formation, the Movement for a Democratic Alternative (Madem G15), are considered to have the best chances.

The PAIGC, which won the last parliamentary elections in 2014, is generally expected to garner the highest number of votes. The party has the most finances, is organized in a relatively professional manner and has the aura of a successful liberation movement against colonialism. But the party also has a big problem. The three main players in the political crisis — Vaz, Pereira and Kassama — are all members of the PAIGC.

Nevertheless party leader Domingos Simoes Pereira, an economics expert trained in Portugal and the US, presents himself as a guarantor of stability. "We are the only ones capable of restoring a state based on the rule of law," he claimed at an election rally. "There are people who believe they can capture the state and turn it into an instrument that serves private interests. Our PAIGC party will restore law and order and will protect citizens' rights."

Where does the money come from?

The PAIGC is traditionally the most powerful political formation in Guinea-Bissau and has the greatest financial assets for its campaign. But other parties are catching up. "Where propaganda is concerned, the PAIGC for the first time has serious competition," political scientist Rui Jorge Semedo told DW. Especially the PRS and Madem G15 have surprisingly large financial and logistical assets for this election, he said.

No one knows where this money has suddenly come from. There is speculation that it may come from dubious sources, possibly abroad, Semedo said. "We see that individual parties have more money at their disposal than the state. The state lacks means of transport, equipment for hospitals and schools." He expects the electoral commission to clarify the origins of the money being used in the campaigns.

Elections 'just the beginning'

Four years of political paralysis have left their traces in Guinea-Bissau. Many schools and universities have been closed for years, the judicial system does not function, the public health sector is in a dire state. The government lacks money for the most basic needs. Even the elections this Sunday had to be financed with help from interational supporters. Gabriel Dava and his team from the UNDP have acccompanied the process from the start.

"Despite all the enthusiasm, it must be said that the elections themselves cannot be the goal. Elections can only be the beginning," Dava said. Afterwards, the real work begins. "It must be ensured that these elections mark a turning point. For that to happen, a lot of work is required, by the Guineans themselves but also by the international community, so that democracy can be consolidated and an inclusive and lasting management of the country can be established."

Black Portuguese Plan A Memorial To Honor Enslaved Ancestors

Gomes Dias' parents were immigrants from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa. (Jake Cigainero for NPR)

BY JAKE CIGAINERO,

NPR TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2018

LISBON (NPR)--Growing up in Portugal's capital Lisbon, Beatriz Gomes Dias says she couldn't identify with the people she saw on TV, in ads or in museums. Her parents were immigrants from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa. There were other black Portuguese, but Gomes Dias says she felt invisible.

"I remember being a child, looking at the majority of Portuguese people and not being like them, and not having a place for me and people like me," she says.

So, the 47-year-old high school biology teacher and her anti-racism association Djass proposed to erect a memorial to colonial slaves in a grassy square along Lisbon's port, where ships once unloaded their human cargo.

Gomes Dias says Portuguese history often portrays slaves as no more than goods for sale. Her Afro-descendant group Djass wants to honor their ancestors who were enslaved and trafficked by the Portuguese.

The memorial would be the first of its kind in Portugal to acknowledge the country's role in the colonial slave trade, according to Gomes Dias, who envisions the monument in the form of a statue or sculpture.

The project was approved in a public vote and won funding from the city last year.

Meanwhile, Afro-Portuguese advocates like Gomes Dias are critical of another historical project planned in Lisbon. The tentatively named Museum of Discoveries, which would tell the story of heroic Portuguese navigators who first charted routes around Africa, India and South America. But the dark side of that rich history entials colonialism and slave trade.

The proposed slavery memorial and the unbuilt museum have become lightning rods for public debate about Portugal's colonial past.

Critics say the museum's theme would whitewash the violence of Portugal's colonial rule. But, in turn, the supporters of the museum accuse their detractors of denying the triumphs of Portuguese explorers.

Renato Epifanio, an academic and the president of the International Lusophone Movement, a group that promotes Portuguese language and culture around the world, says some people make it sound like Portugal invented slavery.

"All other issues, like scientific discoveries, cultural relationships, do not exist. Only the question of slavery," Epifanio said at his office in Lisbon's Palace of Independence. "For us that is profoundly wrong."

He says the slavery memorial and the museum of discoveries would complement each other in the right context. But that context doesn't exist in Portugal, according to anthropologist Bruno Sena Martins.

"Portugal has a self-representation in which the violent history of colonialism is not part of it," Martins says.

Portugal proudly claims to be one of the first countries to abolish slavery following a 1761 decree. But that was only in the homeland. Portuguese slave traders just diverted traffic to the colonies in Brazil, and full abolition didn't come until more than a century later.

Historians estimate Portugal trafficked between 4.5 million and 6 million of the many millions of enslaved Africans. Its large colony in Brazil was a prime destination.

Portugal does not collect or publish data on its citizens' race and ethnicity, so it is difficult to establish the size of its current Afro-descendant population, what portion are descendants of those forcibly brought to the country centuries ago or are more recent arrivals.

But descendants from former colonies, such as Angola and Mozambique, say they have been denied a place in Portugal's history.

"The black Portuguese are not recognized as Portuguese, because they are always relating black Portuguese to the countries in Africa that were occupied by Portugal," Gomes Dias says.

Martins lectures at Portuguese high schools about slavery and colonial violence. He says there's a clear resistance to talking about slavery, and the official history curriculum downplays the subject.

"The argument is that if you go back to this colonial past and this racist history, we are only hurting Portugal," Martins says. "But ignoring racism or colonial history is to accept the continuing violence of racism in our society."

This isn't a new debate for Portugal. Portuguese historians have often claimed the country exercised a "softer" colonial rule compared with its European neighbors. However, Portugal was one of the last European powers to decolonize in Africa in 1975 after colonies resisted for over a decade of bloody war.

Fernando Rosas, a retired Portuguese historian and former parliamentarian, says the difference today is a new generation of historians and researchers of African descent, like Martins, is changing the way Portugal talks about its past. That's why he thinks the Museum of Discoveries will need a different name.

"Museum of Discoveries... of course the Portuguese discovered the world," Rosas says laughing. "We didn't discover anything because people were there, and the people that were there also discovered the Portuguese. The right name is Museum of Colonialism because it is about that we are speaking."

Gomes Dias and her group are still looking for an Afro-descendant artist to design the slavery memorial. But when the monument is unveiled next year, Rosas says it will be a milestone in the fight between Portugal's past and its future.

Lynch Mob Kills 3 Nigerians Accused Of Child Kidnap In Bissau

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Three Nigerians accused of kidnapping a child were lynched to death on Tuesday by an angry mob of young rioters in Bissau, according to a hospital source.

The trio was killed after the disappearance of a young boy on Tuesday morning in the capital of Guinea-Bissau.

A rumour quickly spread across the city that the child had been taken by a group of Nigerians, prompting an angry crowd to gather which security forces were unable to control.

An AFP journalist saw two of the Nigerian bodies in the morgue.

Hundreds of angry rioters, mostly young and armed with stones and bottles, managed to grab one of the suspected kidnappers from a police car as officers stood by powerless, according to the AFP journalist.
"Death to Nigerians! Enough is enough, stop! The Nigerians must leave," chanted the crowd.

Police fired warning shots and tear gas in an effort to disperse the mob, but they were unsuccessful.
The police called for reinforcements and soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States currently in the country were deployed in the town and managed to restore some sense of calm in the afternoon.

Nigeria's embassy in Bissau, where many Nigerians sought refuge, was surrounded by security forces for protection.

Many shop-owners in the city closed because of the violence.

The latest abduction came at a tense time in Bissau, as in the past fortnight several kidnappings have been reported to the police.

Abductions are currently an explosive topic, among the general population and on radio shows in Guinea-Bissau, prompting a number of rumours about who has been responsible for the disappearances.
The authorities have enforced a travel ban on unaccompanied children and any adults travelling with infants who they cannot prove are relations are immediately arrested.

------AFP

ECOWAS expresses concern over political situation in Togo, Guinea Bissau

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has expressed worries over the turn of events in Guinea Bissau and Togo.

The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador Desire Ouedraogo Monday in Abuja said the body has been disturbed by the political and security situation in the last few month.

The President of the ECOWAS Commission, who spoke on Monday at the opening of the 2013 first ordinary session of the Third Legislature of the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja, said the political and security situation in the region in the last few months has been a source of concern.

"The situation in Guinea Bissau and Togo ahead of elections is disturbing, we appeal to all parties to engage in dialogue for peaceful conduct of the polls," he added.

While also noting that the crisis in Mali is under control, Ouedraogo assured that the sub-regional body will do everything possible to promote the values and principle of democracy among member nations.

He told his audience that the role played by the sub- regional body in quelling the insecurity in Mali has raised its stock before its development partners.

Ouedraogo also commended the Republic of Chad, France and other states that contributed troops to Africa led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA).

The ECOWAS Commission president paid tribute to all troops that lost their lives in the intervention efforts.

On ECOWAS Parliament, Oudraogo promised to recommend to the ECOWAS Heads of States and Governments (HoSG) the need to enhance the powers of the parliament to empower it to continue to assist in the integration process.

The President of the Nigerian Senate, Senator David Mark was full of praises for ECOWAS, saying that the regional body has lived up to expectations in upholding stability and peace in the region.

Mark also commended the regional body for standing up against undemocratic practices in the region.

He said Nigeria took the crucial decision to send a high number of troops to Mali because of the realization that terror threat in any part of the sub-region is a threat to the continent and the world.

Speaking on the enhance power sought by the regional parliament, the Speaker of the Parliament, Senator Ike Ekweremadu who expressed hope that the enhanced power for the parliament sought come to fruition, however said it was not meant to diminish the relevance of the other organs of the community.

He stressed that the essence of the power is to ensure the organ take the lead in the emergence of a stronger, more result oriented and more people responsive community.

----------Xingua, May 7, 2013