RIGHTS: Mass Graves Found in Guinea

By Saliou Samb Reprint | | Print |

Saliou Samb

CONAKRY, Nov 14 2002 (IPS) - “Large mass graves, containing hundreds of bodies, have been found at the foot of Mount Gangan in Kindia,” says Mandjou Diallo, president of the Guinean Organisation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym, OGDH.

Diallo says a delegation recently travelled to Kindia – 216 km east of Conakry, Guinea’s capital – accompanied by members of the OGDH and did, indeed, “see mass graves with our own eyes. Hundreds of people, both military and civilian, had been buried there. They were probably executed during the reign of the late President Ahmed Sekou Toure, but some of them may have been killed under the present regime.”

“Large mass graves, containing hundreds of bodies, have been found at the foot of Mount Gangan in Kindia,” says Mandjou Diallo, president of the Guinean Organisation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym, OGDH.

Diallo says a delegation recently travelled to Kindia – 216 km east of Conakry, Guinea’s capital – accompanied by members of the OGDH and did, indeed, “see mass graves with our own eyes. Hundreds of people, both military and civilian, had been buried there.”

“They were probably executed during the reign of the late President Ahmed Sekou Toure, but some of them may have been killed under the present regime,” he noted.

Sekou Toure died in 1984, after ruling Guinea with an iron fist for 26 years, since independence from France in 1958.

Diallo says the graves were a result of the political repression that swept the West African nation in the mid-1960s. Perceived political opponents of then-president Sekou Toure were killed, the most famous of whom was Diallo Telli, the first secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), a 54-nation body, which is now known as the African Union (AU).

Guinean leaders exploited real or imaginary coup d’etat, or armed attacks, as excuses to liquidate their political opponents, he says.

‘’This is not the first time such graves have been uncovered in Guinea. We’ve had similar mass graves uncovered at Nongo – near Conakry – where we’re still unravelling the mystery,” says Diallo.

The current puzzle began late last month when, Aminata Barry, the spokesperson for the Association of Child Victims of Camp Boiro, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), told journalists that three mass graves had been discovered in Kindia.

According to her, one of the graves held around 400 bodies, while in another, the number of bodies could not be determined. Barry was unable to visit the third grave, which, she said, was ‘’very large, and might contain more than a thousand bodies according to witnesses”.

Photographs taken at the gravesites were published in ‘’La Lance”, a private newspaper in Conakry.

Camp Boiro, which is situated in Conakry, is one of the most reviled political prisons of the Sekou Toure dictatorship. According to survivors, one of the most common methods for making prisoners reveal information was the ‘’black diet”, the withholding of all food and water for several days.

More than 50,000 people disappeared, or were assassinated at the camp by the former president’s executioners, according to the Association of Child Victims of Camp Boiro.

But Sekou Toures’ supporters have refuted those figures. ‘’No more than a thousand people died at Camp Boiro,” Ismael Conde, a Guinean politician, defending the former president’s record, told IPS.

Diallo says the mountains surrounding the mass graves are littered with anti-personnel mines ‘’to keep curious people away”. He says his group has asked western embassies for help to clear the area of mines to facilitate the OGDH’s work.

‘’Unfortunately, we’re frequently told that it’s too expensive, and they cite the mine-clearance work in the former Yugoslavia, Angola, etc. But this work has to be done if we are to find out what really happened in this country,” he says.

‘’Now that the army has begun to help us remove the land mines around the graves, I think that we’re going to make some progress, because there are indications that there are more mass graves located across the country,” says Diallo.

The Guinean authorities have not yet responded to the charges of “eliminating” its opponents, levelled against it by rights groups.

The first ‘’plot” to eliminate state opponents began in 1961, and many politicians paid with their lives.

‘’The trend worsened after the attack of Nov 22, 1970, when several high-ranking officials were accused of being in league with anti-government elements, who were supported by Portugal and certain neighbouring countries, ” recalls Adamson Camara, a Conakry resident.

In the mid-1970s, Peulh, an ethnic group in Guinea, was singled out for persecution by the Sekou Toure regime, which accused it of ‘’betraying the goals of the revolution”. But there was also the coup d’etat of Apr 3, 1984, which brought General Lansana Conte to power and, later, the aborted coup of July 5, 1985.

Many Guineans were killed during those years, sometimes under the cover of protecting the country’s security, according to eyewitnesses and human rights activists.