Ten people were killed and thirteen injured on Wednesday, 11 November, when clashes broke out in the Sètiguiyah sector of Balato district, in Kintinian prefecture, near the gold mining town of Siguiri. Five of the dead are foreign nationals whose identities have not yet been established, and the injured include civilians and members of the security forces, according to a provisional toll released by the Guinean government.
Officials say protesters had put up barricades on the route of a patrol. Shots were then exchanged between the two sides. Two security force vehicles and two ore crushing machines were set alight during the clashes. The government condemned the violence on 13 November and referred the case to the judicial authorities.
Tension in the area had been building since 2 November, when President Mamadi Doumbouya signed a decree banning unregulated and clandestine gold mining in the Siguiri region and in other gold-bearing areas of the country. A second decree the following day removed 22 former territorial administrators in Siguiri. Foreign Minister Morissanda Kouyaté said on 5 November that 409 Burkinabè and 606 Malians had been detained and handed over to their embassies. By 9 November the number of people arrested had reached 1,412, with Guinean, Malian, Burkinabè, Nigerien, Ivorian, Togolese and Ghanaian nationals among them.
The first 202 defendants went on trial on 10 November before the Court for the Repression of Economic and Financial Offences (CRIEF), charged with illegal mining, environmental damage and water pollution. The court has merged their case with that of the 22 dismissed administrators, who face corruption and complicity charges, and adjourned the hearing until 16 November. Defence lawyers say twelve of the accused are minors. The special prosecutor rejects that claim.
Mali’s government says more than 100,000 people have arrived from the Guinean mining sites, most of them through the border town of Kouremalé, although it has not said how it arrived at that figure. In Burkina Faso, the emergency relief agency CONASUR had registered 45,406 returnees by 12 November, including 8,270 who arrived that day.
Ministers of the Confederation of Sahel States met in Ouagadougou on 11 and 12 November. Their final statement accepted Guinea’s right to enforce its laws while regretting what the AIB news agency reported as “massive and non-concerted expulsions” of African nationals. Burkina Faso’s Security Minister, Mahamadou Sana, said his government had received no advance notice and had to organise repatriations at short notice. Malian Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maïga, whose country took in the largest share of returnees, spoke of Mali and Guinea as “the two lungs of the same body.”
Guinea says the crackdown is meant to stop chemical pollution, soil destruction and the diversion of rivers, and that detainees are being treated in line with the law. Guinea is not a member of the AES, despite close ties with the military governments in Bamako and Ouagadougou, and there was no regional arrangement in place to handle a population movement of this size.