Guinea-Bissau Opposition Leader Detained, Militia Atrocities Devastate Congo, Uzbek Court Extends Sentence

HRF joins @UNHumanRights in calling on Guinea-Bissau’s military junta to immediately release opposition leader Domingo Simões Pereira from house arrest, lift the restrictions imposed on him, and end the judicial harassment and political repression against him and his party. HRF considers Pereira to be held as a political hostage.

Guinea Bissau’s High Military Command detained Pereira alongside other opposition figures during a November 2025 coup led by officers allied with former ruler Umaro Sissoco Embaló.

After the junta accused the military and opposition figures of attempting a coup, officials blocked the release of results of presidential elections believed to have been unfavorable to Embaló. Pereira was held incommunicado for more than two months before being placed under house arrest in January 2026. On Feb. 12, he was summoned before a military court.

In April, authorities appointed a panel of subservient judges to try Pereira before a military court, but have yet to formally charge him. The regime also cut off Pereira’s access to his lawyers and doctor.

Pereira leads Guinea Bissau’s largest and historically dominant political movement, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). The PAIGC won the 2023 legislative majority before Embaló invoked a purported coup attempt to arbitrarily dissolve parliament in December 2023.

The Supreme Court, which is subservient to Embaló’s regime, disqualified the PAIGC from contesting the 2025 presidential election on dubious technical grounds that were seen as politically motivated. Since the November 2025 coup, political repression of PAIGC has intensified. Earlier this month, authorities arbitrarily prevented PAIGC figure Octávio Lopes from boarding a flight to Senegal.

HRF condemns the campaign of mass atrocities perpetrated by an Islamic State-affiliated militia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). HRF deplores the failure of the DRC regime and the international community to protect the millions of people caught between armed groups and Congolese armed forces, even as a UN Fact-Finding Mission found all sides to be responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last week, @Amnesty International published a report documenting atrocities committed by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — also known as the Islamic State Central Africa Province — including murders, abductions, forced labor, forced marriage, sexual violence against women and girls, and the recruitment of children as young as 10 across North Kivu and Ituri provinces.

The ADF has also carried out bomb attacks in neighboring Uganda, prompting the deployment of Ugandan troops in joint military operations with Congolese forces since November 2021. The joint operations, known as Operation Shujaa, registered some successes but dispersed ADF fighters into a wider geographical area. ADF exploited the redeployment of Congolese forces against the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group to expand its operations and embed itself in local criminal economies.

The resilience of the ADF, founded in 1995, is the result of its exploitation of a weak Congolese state presence, a lawless environment of armed conflict and violence, and predation of natural resources in areas on the Uganda-DRC border.