Guinea-Bissau’s public prosecutor has set up a commission to investigate the murder of rapper and activist Vigario Luis \u200bBalanta, following pressure by the opposition and media to \u200chold those responsible for the killing to account.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/em> previously reported that Balanta feared for his life prior to his killing in March, which drove \u200bthe social and political movement he founded, known as \u200bPo’ di Terra, underground.<\/p>\n Po’ di Terra has accused \u2060the military-led government of protecting his killers<\/p>\n The government, which seized \u200bpower in a coup in November 2025, has previously condemned the \u200bkilling and said it could not comment further until investigations finished.<\/p>\n In a statement on Monday, the prosecution’s office said the commission will have 60 \u200bdays to identify the suspects, the crimes committed and \u200bpresent its conclusions.<\/p>\n Po’ di Terra, which like Balanta has criticised Guinea-Bissau’s cycle of \u200ccoups \u2060and violence, said on Tuesday it welcomed the move while calling for a rigorous, transparent and independent investigation.<\/p>\n “This commission is a sign that popular pressure and the demand for truth \u200bcould not be \u200bignored,” the statement \u2060said. “Po’ de Terra will not watch this process with naivety or passivity. We are following \u200bclosely”.<\/p>\n Nado da Cunha, Po’ di Terra’s new leader, \u200bsaid \u2060the movement was determined to secure justice.<\/p>\n “We demand that this commission not serve for political dividends or cabinet manoeuvres to clean the \u2060image \u200bof institutions,” he wrote in a \u200btext message from Brazil, where he is based for security reasons.<\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22119,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-50550","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"In a statement on Monday, the prosecution's office said the commission will have 60 \u200bdays to identify the suspects, the crimes committed and \u200bpresent its conclusions.","published_date":"","news_description":"In a statement on Monday, the prosecution's office said the commission will have 60 \u200bdays to identify the suspects, the crimes committed and \u200bpresent its conclusions.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50552,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50550\/revisions\/50552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}