Guinea: Amnesty International defends Guinea research against French Government criticism

Amongst other issues, this report raised serious concerns regarding the supply of weapons and internal security equipment to Guinea’s military and security forces by a number of states, including France, which were subsequently used in the massacre. [...] The report also raised concerns that some of the training and assistance provided by France, China and other states to army and gendarmerie units involved in the massacre, lacked rigorous human rights safeguards consistent with international standards which could have helped prevent those units from perpetrating further human rights violations. [...] The French government has issued a rejection of Amnesty International’s report, claiming that it misrepresents some of the facts regarding France’s provision of equipment and training to Guinea’s security forces. [...] The French government’s export control system does not categorise these weapons as ‘military materials’ – a categorisation at odds with the practice of many other European states, and the ‘Common Military List’ of the European Union itself. [...] This excessive and arbitrary use of force was in clear violation of international human rights standards for law enforcement, and form part of a persistent pattern of well-documented violations and abuse by the security forces in Guinea since 1999.