Welcome

Dennis Jones is a Jamaican-born international economist, who has lived most of the time in the UK and USA, and latterly in Guinea, west Africa. He moved back to the Caribbean in 2007. This blog contains his observations on life on this small eastern Caribbean island, as well as views on life and issues on a broader landscape, especially the Caribbean and Africa.

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Military Rule Is Not Cool: REDUX--Death Toll Now 157

The total death toll in this week's military massacre of civilians in Guinea has now reach a stunning 157 people. Those Guineans friends of mine who can speak have nothing but anger and distress in their words. This is too much. The news media are NOW looking more closely at the junta leader and calling him 'erratic' (see BBC report). Well, guess what? Erratic does not mean that you can oversee the carnage of nearly 200 people. The stories of bodies riddled with bullets, or with stab wounds as from bayonets; of women being raped and abused are all to familiar. Nothing suggests an attempt to control, but to mow down, people.

Whatever good people might have felt that Capt. Camara was doing, ruling with compassion is now not going to be high on the list.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It's pretty pathetic, this romance of the gun-toting soldier being able to run a country. After almost all the interventions have ended in failure, it is a wonder that the soldiers have the nerve to assert an authority in this arena, or that the rest of us also persist in accepting the hijacking of our states. The only exception to the rule can be the use of coups to restore constitutional multi-party democracy when it has been hijacked by civilians hell-bent on establishing one-party states.

How does a guy who isn't qualified to run the army end up running a country. This is crazy.