By IPS Correspondents
ABIDJAN, Mar 30 1998 (IPS)

Hundreds of people who had been political prisoners of late Ivoirian head of state Felix Houphouet Boigny are putting pressure on his successor, President Henri Konan Bedie, to compensate them.

“To spend three to four years in prison only to be told that you were not guilty after all is a judicial error for which the State is obliged to compensate the innocent victim,” stressed Professor Samba Diarra, President of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Houphouet-Boigny.

In 1963-64 hundreds of Ivoirians, mostly intellectuals, were arrested for alledgedly plotting to overthrow the then President and threatening the security of the State. Some, including the country’s first Chief Justice, Ernest Boka, died mysteriously while in detention.

Houphouet freed the survivors in 1966-67, saying there was never a plot against him and that he was ill advised by his security men. He also informally apologised to the victims of the plot that never was.

“Under normal circumstances, the President’s admission of our innocence should have been accompanied by a judicial act confirming and consecrating it, but this was not done during Houphouet’s life,” explained Diarra.

“But we think it should be done now, while we are alive, because we do not want a post-mortem rehabilitation,” he added, explaining: “that is why we have formed our Association to serve as a pressure group on the government.”

Diarra last year published a book entitled ‘The false plot of Houphouet-Boigny’ in which he revealed all the methods used by the late President to silence his suspected opponents.

The Association, formed in 1996, has so far written two letters to President Bedie asking him to rehabilitate its members. They also demanded the return of property that had been confisticated from them, their reintegration into their earlier public positions and payment of salaries withheld while they were in detention.

“We think we deserve to be rehabilitated after spending between three to four years in prison for a crime we did not commit,” said Diarra. “More so, some of lost our jobs, our children lived in trauma and our homes had no joy while we suffered in jail.”

The ex-prisoners’ letters to Bedie followed his decision last year to honour the memory of the late Ernest Boka by causing his body to be exhumed for proper burial in a multi-million CFA francs mausoleum in the deceased’s village.

“The State cannot honour those who died as a result of the judicial error and refuse to do the same for those who are still alive,” pointed out Diarra, adding: “The only way we can forget this dark history of Cote d’Ivoire would be by rehabilitating all the victims of this judicial error.”

They are yet to receive a response from Konan Bedie, but some observers, while agreeing with their move, think their chances are slim.

“What they are doing is right. Justice must prevail,” said a member of the Ivoirian Human Rights Association (LIDHO), “but we are living in a country where the majority’s interest is sacrificed to serve that of the minority.”

The human rights activist, who did not want to be identified by name, told IPS: “Some of the victims of the 1963-64 event are now occupying important positions in the administration so they would bloc any attempt to honour their colleagues outside the ruling party.”

There were varied reactions on the issue on the streets of Abidjan but, generally, people did not seem overly sympathetic towards the ex-detainees.

“They are using what happened in 1963-64 just to disturb the peace of people who have nothing to with politics,” commented Ibrahima Sakou, a refrigerator repairer. “Why didn’t they ask Houphouet when he was alive?”

Like many people at the grassroots, trader Colette Kouassi finds bread-and-butter issues are much more important now than justice for people wronged three decades ago.

“For me, my problem is how to feed my family,” she says. “I do not listen to those whose stomachs are full so they can decide to make noise. It is their business. They are all the same.”

However, Diarra is confident the president will rehabilitate them one day soon. “He has done it to the dead so logic and good sense will prevail in the end,” he said.

The ex-political prisoners are not the only victims of the late President’s regime who are calling for justice. In 1994, the families of more than 3,000 political opponents massacred in 1970 by the state during an uprising in the west of the country called for a full report on the incident to put the record straight.

But instead of doing that, Konan Bedie invited 3,000 leaders of the Bete community, to which the victims belonged, to the capital, gave them some money and asked them to forget the incident. “The bad image which the events of 1970 have painted of our country is definitely buried and forgotten after today,” Bedie had told his guests.

No one can say for sure how much different his response will be this time around.

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