As the European Union imposes an arms embargo on Guinea after last month's shooting of opposition protestors in the capital Conakry, rights group Human Rights Watch has said that at least 150 people were purposefully killed and that the elite presidential guard also brutally raped dozens of women in the massacre.

Human Rights Watch Emergencies Director Peter Boucknaert has just returned from a ten day research mission to Guinea. His four member team interviewed more than 150 people who were in the stadium at the time of the shootings. He told Radio Netherlands that the witness testimonies clearly indicated the violence was both organised and premeditated.

Listen to Peter Bouckaert from Human Rights Watch

According to Mr Bouckaert, 50,000 opposition supporters were inside the stadium, listening to speeches given by their leaders, when the elite presidential guard, the ‘red berets’, surrounded the stadium, blocked the exits and fired at point blank range at the crowds until they ran out of bullets. Then they attacked the survivors with knives and machetes. He says that dozens of women were also raped outside the stadium by the same elite guard.

Conflicting figures
Guinea's military leaders maintain that 57 people died accidentally when troops opened fire on demonstrators on 28 September.

Mr Bouckaert says the government is maintaining that figure because many of the bodies were ‘disappeared’ by the military.

“We found strong evidence to support this. We interviewed families who identified their missing at the city morgues. Later those bodies disappeared. They were taken by the military and buried in mass graves. This was clearly no accident. These people were murdered and much of the evidence was disappeared by the red berets themselves.”

Human Rights Watch also has concerns that there is an ethnic element to the massacre, which came nearly a year after Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seized power just hours after the death of president Lansana Conté in December 2008.

Presidential bid
The demonstrators had gathered to protest at rumors that Camara, the leader of a group of Guinean military officers calling themselves the National Council for Democracy and Development, or CNDD, intended to stand for president next year.

Mr Bouckaert says witness testimonies showed that killers and rapists made ethnically biased comments during the attacks and appeared to target the Peuhl, the majority ethnicity of those protesting.

“Camara’s regime comes mostly from southern Guinea, from an ethnic group called the foresters, people who traditionally live in forests. Many of the people who were attacked, raped and abused were from the ethnic Peuhl group. We’re very concerned that there is increased polarisation in Guinea which could spread to further violence.”

As well as an arms embargo, sanctions have also been imposed on Guinea’s military junta.

The EU bloc’s Swedish presidency said in a statement today that “the council has decided to adopt measures at targeting the members of the CNDD and individuals associated with them” which included 42 people, including junta leaders, in response to what it called ‘gross violations of human rights, including many deaths, injuries and rape.”

The International Criminal Court in the Hague has opened an investigation into the massacre.
 

The West Africa regional group ECOWAS has already imposed an arms embargo on Guinea, the world's biggest exporter of bauxite, the raw ore used to make aluminium.