By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jul 30 2010 (IPS)

Celou Dalein Diallo gained a significant advantage over Alpha Condé, his main rival for the Guinean presidency, when a third candidate said he would back Diallo in a second round of voting in August. But what has become of women candidates for high political office in this West African country?

Saran Daraba Kaba's bid to be elected president of Guinea made little headway. Credit: USAID

“Compared to the results achieved by the major players in the election… Saran Daraba’s tally seems trivial when you consider that women make up over 52 percent of the Guinean population,” says Abdoul Gadiri Diallo told IPS, a member of the Guinean Human Rights Organisation.

Women play an active role in Guinea’s political life, at least at the grassroots level. Thousands of women were among those who responded to a call to rally against former military ruler Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in September 2009.

The Sep. 28 rally, organised by a coalition of political parties, trade unions and civil society groups to protest Camara’s proposed candidacy in presidential elections, was brutally suppressed; rights organisations and the U.N. put the death toll at 157.

There were damning reports of the gang rape of women in broad daylight during the crackdown have emerged; soldiers are reported to have violated their victims with guns, sticks and boots, and the International Criminal Court has made preliminary inquiries into the atrocities.

More recently, women made up the bulk of the 3,000 demonstrators who despite a ban on public demonstrations, on Jul. 5 marched in protest against ballot-stuffing alleged to have taken place during the first round of the presidential elections.

“Saran Daraba came out of nowhere in this latest chapter of the struggle for power. She’s certainly competent in certain respects, but was not an acclaimed leader during the recent struggles for democracy and does not represent a vision, a program or a commitment to a better life in Guinea,” says Néné Oumou Baldé, a feminist activist who runs a website devoted to women’s issues.

“Misogyny was a minor factor in her case, although in our country men do hold all power, all wealth and as a rule have no tolerance for strong, independent women. But being a woman is not enough to get elected,” she told IPS.

Despite her poor showing, Saran Daraba defended her candidacy against the criticism: “With 20 years of service in various public and private administrations and now in nongovernmental organisations, I don’t have to prove that I helped improve democracy in my country,” she said.

“We mustn’t forget that this election was dominated by money and ethnic issues. But I did not embezzle when I was in government nor am I supported by a foreign lobby like others. My message was well understood and well appreciated, and that’s what’s most important,” she told IPS.

But women’s willingness to participate in public life has found little reward in seeking political office. Women are woefully underrepresented in Guinea’s government institutions.

There are only five women among the 34 members of the current transitional government and of these, only one the trade unionist Mariama Penda Diallo, holds a ministerial position – responsible for the Ministry of Public Service, Administrative Reform, Labor and Employment.

Another woman trade unionist, Rabiatou Serah Diallo, is president of the National Transition Council which acts as an interim parliament.

Campaigners for the two candidates that topped the first round – Cellou Diallo of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) and Alpha Condé of the Rally of the People of Guinea (RPG) – are quick to argue that their parties reserve a privileged space for Guinean women and that their party’s platforms address the main issues confronting women. They both say it is impossible to improve the situation in Guinea without the contribution of women.

“In our party, women are represented and we aim for parity. For now, our goal is that at least 30 percent of positions (decision-making and within institutions) are held by women,” said Kadiatou Diallo, president of the UFDG’s women’s wing.

Martine Condé, communications director for Condé’s party, told IPS: “The RPG’s strength lies in women and youth. There are at least 30 percent of women in the political command. In each of the party’s decision-making bodies, you will find 15 women out of 45 members.

Moustapha Naité, deputy director of communications at the RPG says his party also prioritises women, “Women are the heart of RPG’s social vision. We will promote them wherever possible to achieve, as soon as possible, gender parity that some countries are campaigning for. Regarding health care, he added: “We are committed to providing free prenatal care for all.”   UFDG’s Ibrahima Diallo told IPS: “We are working to achieve the target of 30 per cent of leadership positions filled by women first within the party, but also in the administration if we win this election.” Then he said, “we will ensure their development and advancement… by organizing them, and giving them access to credit by several different means.”

*An earlier version of this article appeared on the IPS French service on Jul. 14.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jan 21 2010 (IPS)

General Sékouba Konaté, head of Guinea’s military junta since the assassination attempt on Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in December has returned from a week of meetings in Burkina Faso bearing a blueprint for a return Guinea to democratic rule and constitutional order.

Billboard of Captain Camara: the agreement to transition to civilian rule will leave him on the sidelines. Credit: Nancy Palus/IRIN

General Konaté returned to Conakry on Tuesday after spending a week in the Burkinabé capital Ouagadougou, where he met with a convalescing Captain Camara, as well as the Burkinabé president, Blaise Compaoré and drew up a political agreement for a transition to civilian rule.

The agreement, signed on Jan. 15, calls for elections to be held in six months’ time, and asks the injured Camara to stay out of politics – in fact, it states that no member of the junta or active member of the armed forces can contest the elections.

The agreement accounts for almost all the concerns raised by the opposition parties, unions and civil society organisations grouped under the umbrella Forum des Forces Vives (FFV), including appointment of one of the group’s most prominent members, Jean-Marie Doré, as the prime minister who will lead a 101-member transitional government.

The only major FFV proposal not included in the Ouagadougou Agreement is the dissolution of the junta’s ruling National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD).

Alpha Condé and Cellou Dalein Diallo, leaders of the two largest opposition parties in the country, have welcomed the agreement, hoping it will lead to “free and transparent” elections.

But Doré himself – whose selection as interim prime minister is not unanimously supported within the opposition – expressed caution.

“We require prior consultation before any decision on the structure and composition of the government can be taken. We feel that the recent decisions are agreements concluded between President Blaise Compaoré and the junta – to the exclusion of the FFV,” Doré told the press. He was referring in part to the naming of union leader Rabiatou Serah Diallo – a rival candidate for the prime minister’s position – and the CNDD’s General Mamadouba “Toto” Camara as deputies.

Protest poster following the killing of at least 150 people at stadium in Conakry; hundreds more were assaulted and injured. Credit: IRIN

Diallo, leader of the National Confederation of Workers of Guinea (CNTG), also denounced the junta’s unilateral decision to appoint a transitional prime minister and his two deputies.

“We must be consulted properly and not simply dictated to. We will request a meeting with General Sékouba Konaté,” she said.

There was some uncertainty after Idrissa Cherif, a spokesperson for Konaté, told the press the posts of deputy prime minister were to be dropped. On Jan. 20 Konaté duly met with several leaders from the FFV in Conakry, the Guinean capital, but no public announcement of the outcome was made.

For political analyst Madani Dia, the underlying problems remain.

“It is imperative Konaté convinces both the FFV and the CNDD to rally behind him for a successful transition. It will be very difficult, especially amongst the military where certain officials do not want to embrace an end to the crisis. This might even jeopardise Konaté’s plans for military reform.”

The Guinean Armed Forces comprises around 15,000 soldiers following ill-controlled recruitment in recent years.

“The second obstacle is related to the proposed make-up of the Prime Minister’s office,” Dia asserted. “We have a politician (Doré) who is not unanimously accepted, a union official who never should have been appointed (Diallo) and a senior officer (“Toto” Camara, the CNDD’s number two) whose presence clearly tells us the junta is not ready to bow out,” says Dia.

“I think we have good reason to be pessimistic about the successful completion of this transition, especially in the six-month deadline. Even the consultations on the formation of the government are likely to be long drawn-out affairs and that is not a good thing,” he adds.

Despite the pessimism of these opposition voices, most people prefer to remain hopeful.

“I’m crossing my fingers in the hope things will for once be normal in Guinea. For several months, it’s been impossible for me to run my business,” says Naby Diallo, who imports tiles for construction.

“Before, I could bring up to thirty containers of tiles into Guinea each month. Since these (difficult) events, I’ve not even been able to manage two per month,” he laments.

For his part, Boubacar Diallo, an executive in a Nigerien bank in the process of establishing a Conakry office, says, “Confidence has been restored to the country with the agreement negotiated by Konaté. We expect that the situation will soon allow us to conduct business profitably.”

Conakry businessman Moussa Dioumessy said, “I think we shouldn’t confuse things. The appointment of a prime minister from the opposition should not cause us to lose sight of the fact that we have to be serious about the appointments of members of the government. But we must first appreciate that this is an unexpected step forward.”

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Oct 8 2009 (IPS)

Under growing pressure ten days after a violent crackdown, killed 157 civilians, Guinean junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara has announced an independent committee of inquiry into the deaths.

The junta continues to insist that only 57 people died, mostly killed in a stampede, but human rights organisations and the U.N. say heavily-armed soldiers killed 157 people at Conakry Stadium on Sep. 28.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara says a commission of inquiry into events will have 31 representatives, including members of the judiciary and the civil society.

Burkinabé president Blaise Compaoré has attempted to mediate between Guinea’s military government and the “Forum des Forces Vives, but the coalition of political parties, trade unions and civil society groups says Camara must dissolve the ruling military council and resign before they will participate in any political process.

More than 50,000 people responded to a call to attend a Sep 28 rally organised by the Forum des Forces to express opposition to junta leader Camara’s candidacy in presidential elections scheduled for January 2010.

According to witnesses, soldiers armed with automatic weapons, machetes and knives attacked the rally held in a stadium in the capital Conakry, firing live ammunition into the crowd.

Damning reports of the gang rape of women in broad daylight during the crackdown have emerged; soldiers are reported to have violated their victims with guns, sticks and boots.

Recalling the carnage, Mariama Sy Diallo, a prominent member of Guinean civil society, told media, “They fired on us like we were animals. When I was told they were raping women, I tried hide in the crowd so as to save myself.”

She says she herself was chased and beaten by soldiers in the stadium.

“As long as these people remain in power, I will not return to Guinea,” says Sy Diallo, presently in the Senegalese capital Dakar receiving treatment for injuries.

Days after the bloody crackdown, authorities were still trying to downplay the death toll, officially announcing 57 dead.

But an Oct. 2 ceremony to hand over the bodies of the dead came to an abrupt end when many people who came to at the main mosque in Conakry were unable to retrieve the bodies of their relatives. The situation became tense and police used tear gas, and fired shots into the air to disperse the enraged relatives of victims.

Papa Koly Kourouma, environment minister and close associate of the head of the junta, said this: “Let those who say there were 157 deaths show us the one hundred missing bodies. The director of the Ignace Deen Hospital and Medical Examiner have put the figure at 57 dead. So I do not understand why rumours of the existence of mass graves continue.”

Non-governmental organisations dealing with human rights say the military has secretly buried the bodies in mass graves.

Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Human Rights Organisation tells IPS, “The official evidence we have gathered tells us that soldiers went to hospitals to remove bodies and send them to unknown destinations.”

Observers say they are very worried about the future of the country, especially as the junta leader has admitted to the media that he does not control the army. Many observers believe that the investigation can only be carried out by an international commission of inquiry whose authority the junta accepts, even if it accuses its opponents of being behind the situation.

Youssouf Sylla, a humanitarian law expert based in Conakry, tells IPS, “The scale of the massacre and the barbaric nature of the crimes committed can only be judged by an international criminal court. Guinean courts have neither the human resources nor the means to take charge of this issue.”

He adds, “After January and February 2007 when the army fired on the crowd killing more than 130 people (official figure), a proper investigation was not allowed. It is because authorities downplayed this incident that the massacres of Monday, September 28 took place.

“What threat was posed by an unarmed crowd in an enclosed area? ”

Political scientist Madani Dia told IPS, “I fear for the future of this country. If we want to stop crimes going unpunished in Guinea, we will have to considerably reduce the influence of the army in state affairs.”

Gilles Yabi, a former analyst with the International Crisis Group told IPS only limited action was possible at present. “The Guinean army will remain a threat to civilians for a while yet. But I think for now one will just have to live with it and gradually create the conditions for radical reform.”

He added, “The United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and other international bodies are doing everything possible to isolate the junta, but I think the precondition is to send an international intervention force to alleviate the sense of omnipotence of the killers.”

Hemmed in on all sides by international pressure, the junta has proposed establishing a government of national unity, inclusive of the various political parties. The initiative has been categorically rejected by the opposition.

Mouctar Diallo is a young opponent who, like all political leaders present at the stadium on Monday, was beaten by the military. “We’re not interested in that kind of red herring. Captain Moussa Dadis Camara has lost all credibility in the eyes of a population he has massacred.”

Some observers also fear a division within the junta, between one camp wanting to avoid sanctions imposed by an international criminal court, and the other camp having no choice but to adopt the regime’s ever-hardening stance.

*An earlier version of this article appeared on the IPS French service on Oct. 2.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Dec 24 2008 (IPS)

Just under 48 hours after the death of Guinean president, Lansana Conté on Dec. 22, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara has been named Guinea's new head of state by the National Council for Democracy and Development, known by its French acronym, CNDD.

The CNDD, created on Dec. 23 by the leaders of a military coup launched shortly after Conté's death, has promised to lead a to hold democratic elections in December 2010. It has also decreed a country-wide curfew from 8 pm to 6 am, to be observed after the funeral for the deceased president is held on Dec. 26.

By the morning after President Conté's death, soldiers had forcibly occupied the premises of Guinea's national broadcaster to announce the suspension of the constitution, the dissolving of the government and the institutions of the republic.

Captain Camara read a declaration on national radio and television in his capacity as spokesperson for the coup plotters. "The Armed Forces of Guinea have decided to put an end to disorder, restore the authority of the state, fight against corruption to reinforce democracy and fight against poverty."

Calm reigns in the country for the moment, even if not everyone appears to support the takeover. While both the head of the national assembly, Aboubacar Somparé – constitutionally-designated successor to Conté – and Prime Minister Souaré, have rejected the coup, the putschists have occupied all strategic points in the capital Conakry.

Captain Camara has announced the names of 26 soldiers – all young officers trained in major military academies in the West – and six civilians who now make up the National Council for Democracy and Development, the self-designated body to lead the transition in the country.

The opposition has maintained a principled position of condemning the coup attempt.

"I am against all attempts to overturn legal power by force, and I will fight whoever tries to devalue the democratic gains of the Republic of Guinea," said Mouctar Diallo, a young political leader, president of the New Democratic Forces party.

The most important opposition leader, Alpha Condé, president of the Rally of the Guinean People, who returned to the country the day after Conté's death, is yet make a public statement.

However, the Party for Unity and Progress (PUP), on whose platform Conté stood for president in 1993, 1998 and 2003 has not been particularly outspoken.

"People are waiting to see what happens because the situation is confused and one doesn't know exactly where it will end now that the army is now involved in the succession of the president," PUP member of parliament Cheikh Tidiane Traoré told IPS.

Conté himmself came to power in a bloodless coup following the death of the president-dictator Sékou Touré in 1984 and ruled the country with an iron hand for 24 years. But he will also be remembered as the leader who introduced freedom of expression, a greater openness to the outside world and multiparty elections as part of a new constitution in 1990.

Camara and the CNDD have taken control of a country rich in natural resources (including bauxite, gold, diamonds and iron), but with a fragile state weakened by corruption and a culture of violence instilled in certain elements of the army. In January and February 2007, soldiers fired live ammunition at a crowd of demonstrators in Conakry, causing at least 186 deaths.

More than 53 percent of the Guinean population lives below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day, according to official figures.

*The French version of this article contains additional information.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Nov 14 2008 (IPS)

Surprises have been a common occurrence in the all-but-common political career that made Kaba Rougui Barry the first female mayor in Guinea since political parties were legalised in 1990.

Guinea's maverick politician Kaba Rougui Barry. Credit: Saliou Samb/IPS

Rougui Barry's offices are in her home, in Coleah Lansebounyi, a neighborhood near Conakry, the Guinean capital. Alongside a few pictures of the politician, a sign stands out: "Women are equal to men."

"Whether in politics or any other sphere, women who demand equality are marginalised. It happens in Guinea, as it happens in other countries. Women are intimidated and shy away from political careers," Rougui Barry told IPS.

The story starts in 1990, when a group of young people convinced her to run for mayor of Matam, one of Conakry's four communes.

It was a daunting challenge for a woman with no political experience in this country where 85 percent of the population is Muslim.

"I was inexperienced, but with the advice of my father and husband, I overcame that and jumped in with both feet," she told IPS.

The then 53-year-old threw herself into the race and, to everyone's surprise, won the mayorship in 1991, besting four male adversaries.

A "repeat offender", she was to win again in 1996, but this time irritated President Lansana Conté and the ruling Unity and Progress Party (UPP) who blocked her swearing in.

"The county had no mayor for seven months before I could assume my functions. The two mandates made for a 10 year stretch during which I achieved 70 to 80 percent of my action plan," Rougui Barry highlighted.

Following a new law requiring that mayors be members of a political party, Rougui Barry joined the opposition Union of Republican Forces (URF) in 2001, after first approaching the UPP.

"Rougui Barry is a fighter, we have to admit it. But she went to the opposition because the UPP wouldn't put her on the ticket," confirmed Sékou Konaté, Secretary General of the UPP, the current ruling party.

To block this inconvenient candidacy, in 2000 the government refused to validate Rougui Barry's list.

"I was the main target of that law. The President wanted the UPP to win all 38 counties in the country, but everyone knew that it would be impossible in Matam," she noted.

In March 2004, Rougui Barry and a number of other public figures were arrested and imprisoned for 44 days, accused of plotting a coup. They were acquitted a few months later.

Some good, some bad

During her mandate in Matam, Rougui Barry managed to instill trust between different communities. She also achieved a number of public work projects, such as walkways along Fidel Castro highway which made it safer for pedestrians to cross.

This was accompanied by highway widening projects that extended beyond Matam.

"Nothing came easy. Religious edicts didn't allow for women as county heads in 1991, however I managed to get all religious communities to come together in managing the county, by consulting with each of them," Rougui Barry adds.

"Over the years they came to understand that the woman was also a fighter who defended everyone's interests. Poverty reduction was a major social issue," she notes.

Women were steered towards trades such as dyeing and soap-making, and a program was created where unemployed youth could meet with businesspeople.

"I'm satisfied with our outcomes," she says, beaming with pride.

But the story of her political struggles hasn't always been a rosy one. "The low point was feeling completely abandoned by the authorities despite all the work that had been put in, work that the citizens themselves acknowledged. The best moments are always the success stories in the administration's action plan."

A few surprises

A mother of five, the former Matam mayor and current director of Supporting Sustainable Development, a humanitarian NGO, also has a degree in economics.

Always unpredictable, she uses this character trait to destabilise her adversaries.

"She's impossible to pin down – which makes her an opponent to the bone. Its always better to have her with you, than against you," admits UPP's Konaté.

Rougui Barry's actions are sometimes a bit surprising. A few weeks ago she sat on a police car and refused to budge, protesting against her brother's recent arrest. According to her, the brother was a victim of blackmail and harassment. She was manhandled in front of incredulous witnesses, and taken to judiciary police's office where she collapsed, unconscious.

"Such a scene proves that she's out to get attention – better to fuel her high political aspirations. She's also overly impulsive, and will have to gain some self-control if she's to go further," says Oumar Yacine Bah, an economist who has been following Rougui Barry's career closely. "She's a good woman, and a woman of principle – two very important elements in politics," he adds.

Rougui Barry isn't coy about her plans. "If I can gather 1,000 signatures from major electors, and if each of them can carry at least 500 people, I'm running for president," she told IPS.

The first lady of Guinean politics still has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Oct 4 2008 (IPS)

Long absent from the top posts in the civil service and under-represented in political parties, Guinean women are calling for changes during legislative elections planned for December.

Women like this trainee doctor are pushing against entrenched male attitudes blocking women from powerful positions. Credit: Nicholas Reader/IRIN

"Women are left out of decision-making whether at the level of the family or in public affairs," according to a 2006 report published by the Ministry for the Promotion of Women.

"The situation is the same within political parties. Women are called upon to organise during major demonstrations, yet they're denied access to key positions. Even worse: their names appear at the end of party lists, thereby reducing their chances of being selected by proportional voting," said Fatou Baldé. Baldé is Secretary General of the Association for the Promotion of Islamic Culture and the Defence of Children's and Women's Rights (APROCIDEF, in French).

The West African country is the world's leading exporter of bauxite, yet half of its 10.2 million people live on less than one dollar a day, according to official statistics.

"A woman president would be better for Guinea. And it's also time for women in real positions of power in all the ministries – they're better managers of human and financial resources," said Diaby Ilyassou Barry, APROCIDEF's vice-president.

In this majority Muslim country barely 20 percent of women can read – a literacy rate nearly three times lower than for men.

"There aren't enough professional women compared to men. Women's jobs are often extensions of their domestic roles: secretaries, assistants," Alpha Amadou Bano Barry explained to IPS. Barry is a sociology professor at Université de Sonfonia, in Conakry, the Guinean capital.

According to the Ministry for the Promotion of Women only 30 percent of civil service jobs are held by women. Less than a quarter of these are top-level administrators, positions reserved for university graduates.

Camara Fatou Bangoura is a notable exception. This widowed mother of seven does not have a university degree, but over the years she has become a strong defender of human rights, unions and women, rallying people across ethnic lines.

Bangoura, makes most of her speeches in her native language, Soussou. However she did not join the Soussou-dominated political party that is now in power, but started her activism as a member of the opposition in the early 1990s.

"I became involved in politics because I cannot tolerate injustice. I don't let people walk all over me and I speak my mind," she told IPS. "I defend everyone, not just women. Being a woman is not a disadvantage if you have some personality."

"The problem is not religion – the problem is men's control of women's place in our society," says sociologist Barry. "Generally speaking, women's public lives start after they've had their children. It's no coincidence that most of the women with higher positions are over 50, which is approximately the age of menopause."

Historically Guinea has had just a few women in high office. Under the first republic (1958-1984), Jeanne Martin Cissé was Guinea's United Nations representative and since 1984, Mahawa Bangoura and then Fatoumata Kaba have served as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Signs of change

The Rassemblement du peuple de Guinée (RPG), the largest opposition party, has reserved 30 percent of their seats for women. The party's national executive counts eight women out of twenty-three members.

"We're the only party where the number two position is held by a woman (Fatou Bangoura), after the leader (Alpha Condé)," Mohamed Diané, RPG's Executive Secretary told IPS.

However, he said the goal of 50 percent women on the electoral rolls is "utopian" for the time being.

Many disagree with the idea of quotas for women in political parties or the civil service.

"Women must wait until they're ripe to be chosen. The worst thing that could happen would be misplaced feminism. There are no handouts in politics," opined Sékou Konaté, Secretary General of the ruling Parti de l'unité et du progrès (PUP), which has only five women amongst the 31 members of its executive.

"The fighters can make it. They have to be ready to step out of the shadows and stand their ground. They have to know how to roll with the punches," said Konaté.

However gross inequality may eventually call for affirmative action.

Mabinty Sylla, External Secretary of the National Network of Young Women Leaders of Guinea (RENAJELF, in French), stresses that women's participation in roles other than as "political sheep" should be intensified.

"A clear message should be sent to political leaders. You'll get our vote if we participate equitably in all facets of party management," said Sylla. "What's particularly unfair is that very capable women are dismissed solely on the basis of their gender. Ability should come first."

In Barry's view, to strengthen Guinean women's political participation, "new policies should be put in place at the university and secondary school levels. Women should be able to find training right here in Guinea within top-notch institutions with qualified personnel".

Legislative elections may actually get delayed until February 2009. This would leave more time for party activists to mobilise for better representation in parliament.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Sep 1 2008 (IPS)

Kadiatou Diallo Sylla shares a shack with her family in Bambeto, a Conakry suburb. She is haunted by memories of her 14-year-old son, an only child: he was killed by the military during anti-government demonstrations in January 2007.

A year after a national inquiry was launched into the killings that took more than 186 lives, Diallo Sylla still doesn’t know who killed her son, Kerfalla. The situation leaves her filled with a burning rage.

“I waited seven years into my marriage to have my only son, Kerfalla. I would have never imagined that he would die like this,” she told IPS with tears in her eyes.

Her husband Oumar Sadio Sylla explained how police shooting from a car killed Kerfalla. He was hit twice, one bullet passing through his neck.

“I was at least hoping for his killers to be put on trial. But we waited in vain,” a resigned Sadio Sylla told IPS. “I have no faith in the inquiry. For now we just want to know what happened. We can forgive, but we have to know the truth,” he added.

Abdoulaye Diallo, however, is less conciliatory. His 19 year old son was killed with a bullet to the head on February 13, 2007. From his Koloma home in Conakry’s suburbs, he says he won’t rest until he knows what happened to his son – and justice is served.

“I can’t forgive. They killed my son under false pretenses. He was completely unarmed – not a gun, or a rock, or a even a stick. But they shot him,” Diallo told IPS.

More than 186 people died in the wave of repression that followed anti-government demonstrations and strikes in January and February 2007. However the government only acknowledges 137 victims.

In June 2006, at least 13 people, most of them students, were shot in the capital Conakry and two other cities of this West African country.

A national inquiry was launched to investigate the two bloody events. Mounir Hussein Mohamed, lawyer and president of the inquiry, says that the investigation has been obstructed, though authorities deny this.

“Absolutely no progress has been made and we’re at the same point we were at last year. This is unacceptable. The culprit here is the lack of political will,” Mohamed told IPS.

During public consultations held in August, an army spokesperson made a formal public apology. This followed an earlier apology to the Guinean people from General Diarra Camara, head of the country’s armed forces, in the wake of previous clashes between police and the army which killed 20 people in June 2006.

“The (political) will is clear and present at all levels,” says Amadou Oury Bah, Minister of National Reconciliation. “Military institutions asking for forgiveness is not a common occurrence. The symbolism is very powerful.

“There are different understandings of what justice means. We’re trying to build an alternative to the radical attitude where victims seek revenge by imprisoning the guilty.”

Bah stresses that the best way forward is to lay strong foundations for strengthening democracy and the nation. “We’re witnessing a historic moment. The whole nation will come to commend the victims for struggling for a vision of Guinea that will bring about an evolutionary change.”

Bah’s statement seems to be an accurate summary of the current government’s position, but its a risky one according to Madani Dia, a political analyst.

“The Prime Minister seems to have chosen to focus on improving living conditions while sweeping the killings under the carpet. If he succeeds in the former, then the latter will be forgotten for a while. However, if he fails, then the situation may get worse than what we saw in early 2007.”

The Prime Minister, Ahmed Tidiane Souaré is a close ally of Guinean president Lansana Conté. He was appointed in May 2008, replacing Lansana Kouyaté – the compromise candidate who took office in February 2007 with a mandate to resolve the crisis.

The investigation into the killings made no better progress on Kouyaté’s watch than under Souaré; it is made all the more sensitive by the fact that witnesses indicted individuals close to the president’s family.

Dustin Sharp, researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW), says the government is being reckless and should make the national inquiry truly effective. “A very dangerous message is being sent to armed forces: that violence and lack of discipline are acceptable behavior.”

Sharp confirmed to IPS that HRW sent a letter this to Souaré in August stating their concerns about human rights in Guinea.

Souleymane Bah, from the the Guinean Human Rights Organisation (Organisation guinéenne des droits de l’Homme – OGDH), feels that impunity aggravates violence. “We will be writing a letter to remind the government that the victims of last year’s attacks have not seen justice. We plan to demonstrate if the government does not respond,” he warns.

Thierno Maadjou Sow, OGDH’s president, has called for an international investigative commission, a motion backed by most members of the local independent NGO coalition. OGDH feels so strongly that only an international commission could maintain the necessary independence that it refused to participate in the national inquiry.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Dec 30 2006 (IPS)

The Niger river snakes through nine countries in West Africa before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. It is an epic 4,200 kilometres in length, provides sustenance to millions of people – and has trouble brewing at its source.

In the Faranah region of central Guinea where the river begins, small islands of sand have formed in the bed of the Niger, prompting a decline in fishing and harvests.

“The silting up of the Niger river has caused our revenues to tumble. The level of water does not allow for fish resources to be renewed. The fish are threatened because there are practically no more deep waters where they can breed,” Lanciné Camara, who is in charge of a group of about 300 fishermen, told IPS.

At approximately the start of the 1990s, he adds, “we managed to catch more than 50 kilogrammes of fish in an hour of fishing. Today, an entire night of work is not enough to catch a quarter of this amount.”

All in all, notes meteorology official Namory Diakité, the silting up of the Niger has affected 210,000 square km of arable land, and undermined the livelihood of about 110 million people. After leaving Guinea, the Niger makes its way through Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria.

According to Benjamin Tounkara, a water and forestry engineer, there are three main causes for the silting up of the Niger: deforestation, soil erosion and climate change, which has resulted in noticeably diminished rainfall.

“The plant cover does not exist here any longer. The savannah has gained ground, and several small rivers have disappeared,” he told IPS.

Diakité notes that until about 1970, an average of 50 millimetres (mm) of rain fell annually in the north of the Niger river basin, and up to 4,000 mm in the wetter regions of the south. This has fallen to 30 mm and 375 mm respectively.

The “border” marking the region where rain starts to fall “is only moving south year after year, prompting complete desertification of areas that are deprived of water in the basin of the Niger river. The level of water tables has lessened considerably” adds Diakité.

Famoro Camara, a farmer, is another of those affected by the changes that are taking place with the Niger and its environs. “Without fertilizer, I now have difficulty obtaining eight sacks of rice per hectare – about a tonne. Beforehand, I harvested more than 20 sacks a hectare,” he said in an interview with IPS.

“We do not even manage to provide our daily food…(and) send our children to school,” added Camara, who is also a muezzin, calling Muslims to prayer at the mosque in the village of Faranah.

A national initiative to combat desertification in Guinea is underway.

“The aim of the programme is to fight against deforestation, soil erosion…bush fires and the overgrazing that leads to considerable land damage,” Djiramba Diawara, manager of the national office for water and forests, told IPS – noting that Guinea received 50,000 dollars in international funding for this programme in 1997.

Authorities also began a campaign to reforest the banks of the Niger in 2004.

Failure to restore the river to health will have dire consequences well beyond the countries it flows through, warns Diawara, who points out that declining harvests and fish catches lead to food insecurity, and greater poverty and misery on the African continent.

“The direct consequence of this trend is economic emigration towards the countries of the North, with all the problems that this can cause (in these states),” he says, adding that this should prompt the international community should pay greater attention to the fight against desertification.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Dec 11 2006 (IPS)

Behind bars, away from intrusive stares, the prisoners most recently sentenced to death in Guinea wait to hear their fate. The last time executions were carried out in this West African country was in 2001.

The country’s two most famous inmates are housed at Kindia prison in eastern Guinea, about 135 km from Conakry, the capital. They are diamond-dealer Malick Conde, 26, and police officer Cleophace Lamah, 30.

Conde and Lamah are accused having savagely murdered diamond merchant Mohamed Toure in Conakry in 2000. After strangling him and binding his hands and feet, they broke his neck and a leg and stuffed him in a box, all to rob him of about 20 precious gems.

Lamah, a former member of an organised crime squad, had befriended Conde and served as his protector. They were arrested in October 2000 and sentenced to death in August 2005.

They join nine others who were sent to death row here this year. The men have also been sentenced to death by the Conakry Court of Assizes in 2006 for having slit the throat of a neighbourhood leader in the capital.

Their cells are grim; the only real furniture is a couple of wooden benches. It is impossible to know exactly what takes place in the mountaintop silence of Kindia’s cells, where most of those condemned to death are doomed to reflect upon their fate.

Perhaps they had a bit of hope. The death penalty, reintroduced in 1984, has only been implemented once – against seven criminals -, in 2001.

Sentenced six years earlier by the Conakry Court of Assizes, they were shot by a firing squad at Kindia after being brusquely awakened in the middle of the night.

The decision to “reactivate the death penalty” was taken by then minister of justice Abou Camara, who wanted to end the climate of insecurity that reigned when Guinea was attacked by rebels from neighbouring Liberia in 2000 and was subject to an uncontrolled influx of war weapons.

Now, human rights activists and the prisoners themselves believe public pressure may reactivate the death penalty once more. The public, they fear, believes that executing prisoners will bring an end to the ever-increasing violence.

During his last tour around the country before dying from an illness in November, Guinean Minister of Security Ibrahima Dieng, responding to demands from the populace, publicly called for the execution of death row inmates to take place more quickly. The government did not object to this remark.

A recent illustration of the attractiveness of the death penalty to the Guinean public: In July, 15 men suspected of being involved in a murder were burned alive after being soaked in acid in Nzerekore, in the south of the country, before the authorities were able to restore calm.

“Under the First Republic (1958-1984), sometimes for political motives, criminals were hung in public to be made an example of. People wrongly think that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but all the studies show the contrary,” says Alpha Amadou Bano Barry, a professor of sociology at the University of Conakry.

“We’re applying bad solutions to real problems. To effectively stamp out crime you need … to combat poverty and unemployment, in order to provide everyone with the basic services that they are entitled to,” Barry emphasised.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of Guineans are Muslim – more than 80 percent of its eight million inhabitants – may help explain the country’s prevailing attitude toward crime. Many Muslims, according to Barry, favour the death penalty.

Moreover, human rights lawyers say, the government must first prove that it is capable of being fair and just before it can apply the ultimate punishment.

“The death penalty only makes sense if the judicial system respects all the rules regarding penal proceedings. Such is not the case in Guinea,” Conakry jurist Youssouf Sylla told IPS.

Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Organisation for Human Rights (OGDH), adds that he is critical of the torture which continues to take place at military and local and national police installations.

“The first regime offered people employment opportunities, even though it was itself guilty of committing crimes. This explains the low crime rate during that time,” Sow said.

Importantly, the death penalty should only be used on prisoners who are deemed unsafe for society. Those executed in 2001 all expressed profound remorse during visits from OGDH members to Kindia Prison, Sow said.

The seven men executed in 2001 “were so afraid to die and had so reflected upon their crimes, that I’m convinced that if given a second chance, they would have been salvageable, from a societal point of view,” he said.

It is a tale that has the current death row inmates worried. “Malick (Conde) says that when he thinks of the case of the seven prisoners executed in 2001, he has trouble sleeping at night. He’s very afraid at night,” Paul Youmba Kourouma, his lawyer, told IPS.

Kourouma believes that Conde has been wrongly condemned.

“I’m for the death penalty because I think that there are infractions that are so serious that death is the only sanction. But I don’t agree with Malick’s sentence in this case because the truth of the matter was never brought out,” he said.

“Even the medical examiner acknowledged in court that Toure was killed by an experienced specialist in combat techniques, which completely matches Cleophace’s (Lamah’s) profile,” said Kourouma. “If the Supreme Court rejects our appeal, our only remaining recourse will be a presidential pardon.”

Lamah was defended by court-appointed attorneys, but during the trial and given the military manner in which Toure was killed, opinions were unanimous that he was in fact the murderer. Still, he sought to pin co-authorship of the crime on Malick. It was also proven during the trial that Lamah tried to poison him in prison.

Moreover, Kourouma charges that the government has roughly mistreated the prisoners.

Conde and Lamah had their arms tightly bound to their backs with ropes for the 135-kilometre trip to Kindia after they were sentenced to death, he said.

“Such treatment caused them to lose the use of their upper limbs during a period of about two months. That’s very serious,” the lawyer said.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 23 2006 (IPS)

Scientists who discovered a new variant of the hantavirus, in Guinea, have advised that measures be taken to avoid its possible transmission to humans. The virus is carried by a type of mouse, Hylomyscus simus, which is found in forested areas of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

“We don’t know at this point if this new virus, named the Sangassou hantavirus, is dangerous for humans, but we’re in the process of investigating (the matter),” said Dr Jan ter Meulen, head of the research team. The virus was named after the area of Guinea where it was discovered (the first hantavirus took its name from the Hantaan river area in South Korea, where it was identified).

While he has been quoted as saying that people should not be unduly afraid of the virus, ter Meulen nonetheless thinks that it probably is able to be transmitted to humans.

Hantaviruses present in Europe, Asia and the United States are known to cause disease in humans – and may even prove fatal: in 1993, about 20 people died from the virus in the United States.

“We discovered a hantavirus which seems to resemble the one that causes grave illness in Asia and Europe, of which the main symptoms are fever, kidney failure and haemorrhaging (bleeding),” said ter Meulen.

“Serious illnesses caused by hantaviruses form part of the family of illnesses called haemorrhagic viral fevers, like Lassa fever, yellow fever or Ebola fever, that are all found in West Africa.”

In light of this certain precautions are in order, observes another researcher: Dr Lamine Koivogui, co-ordinator of the Project to Research Viral and Haemorrhagic Fevers in Guinea (Projet des recherches sur les fièvres virales hémorragiques en Guinée, PFHG).

“For the moment, we can only advise people to avoid all contact with the mice in which we discovered the Sangassou hantavirus. Above all, they must avoid being bitten…or eating the uncooked flesh of these rodents…In addition, food must be well protected to avoid contact (with mice),” he noted. Children are said to eat the mice on occasion, for amusement.

Scientists also recommend that families keep cats as pets, as these prey on the mice that harbour the Sangassou hantavirus.

“It is necessary to make people who have contact with this type of mouse aware (of the virus). At the same time, we must push ahead with research on the virus, to understand its process of evolution,” said Koivogui.

The rodents are common in the southern region of Nzérékoré, and Faranah in central Guinea. An upcoming study will examine the percentage of the population testing positive for exposure to the virus.

The discovery of the Sangassou variant marks the first time that a hantavirus has been found in Africa.

“At first, we began a research programme on the Lassa and yellow fever viruses. It was by accident that we discovered this new hantavirus,” said Koivogui.

About 15 scientists took part in the study, of which the findings were published this month.

With financing from the European Union (EU), the PFHG allows researchers to study viral fevers like Lassa, yellow fever and other sicknesses.

The EU provided more than 400,000 dollars for a six-year period from 1999 to 2005. There is also a fund of almost 50,000 dollars planned for the 2006 to 2009 period, according to Koivogui.

Symptoms of Lassa fever include a high fever, and bleeding in the nose, mouth and ears. The virus that causes this illness is also carried by a species of mouse, Mastomys natalensis.

“Lassa fever sometimes causes people infected with it to die. If in Guinea the prevalence of Lassa is significant in the forested region, one must note that this fever is (also) responsible for many deaths in Liberia and Sierra Leone,” said Dr Assiatou Bah, a specialist in haemorrhagic fevers at the Hospital Centre of Donka University in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

“The virus responsible was discovered for the first time in Nigeria, in a village called Lassa,” she added.

Yellow fever and Ebola fever have already caused hundreds of fatalities in Africa.

According to the World Health Organisation, the Ebola virus was responsible for the deaths of about 800 people in Africa between 1976 and 2000. The countries most affected were Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Uganda.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 18 2006 (IPS)

Since being introduced in Guinea in 1989, micro- credit organisations have made their mark. Take the case of Batouly Diallo.

Seated behind a table at the market in Gaoual, northern Guinea, the 45- year-old food seller is a client of Rural Credit of Guinea (Crédit rural de Guinée, CRG): one of several micro-finance institutions that operate in the West African country.

CRG provided an initial loan of about 30 dollars to Diallo, who has used funds from the organisation to increase her turnover during the past seven years.

“Since I obtained my loan at CRG, my life has changed. Today, without the help of my husband, I manage to buy my clothes and those of my children,” she told IPS.

However, high interest rates have made micro-credit organisations a less attractive proposition for others.

“You find yourself with an annual interest rate of 30 percent,” an employee of the Pride Finance micro-credit grouping, who asked for anonymity, explained to IPS.

“It’s excessive, as this means that for each loan the client is obliged to repay almost a third (of the original amount).”

The three principal micro-finance organisations in Guinea set different interest rates: 2.5 to 3.5 percent monthly at CRG, depending on the loan; from 1.2 to 2.5 percent at Yété Mali – and three percent at Pride Finance. (“Yété Mali” means “help yourself” in the local Soussou language.)

Managers of the institutions say the rates are needed to cover the personnel and logistical costs they incur.

“If we have a dispute at Nzérékoré (in southern Guinea), for example, we are obliged to send out a field agent (and) take care of him for the duration of his stay there…This necessarily implies costs,” says Macky Bah, one of the managers of Pride Finance, which is based in the capital – – Conakry.

Microfinance Gateway, an online resource centre on micro-credit, also notes that the alternative to high rates has its own pitfalls.

“The microfinance institution could subsidise the loans to make the credit more ‘affordable’ to the poor. Many do,” says an entry on the donor-funded Gateway website, which is maintained from Washington.

“However, the institution then depends on permanent subsidy. Subsidy- dependent programmes are always fighting to maintain their levels of activity against budget cuts, and seldom grow significantly.”

In addition, subsidised loans can prove relatively expensive for would- be borrowers.

“A long series of studies has shown that many programmes that charge subsidised interest rates end up using rationing mechanisms to distribute credit in response to excess demand. These mechanisms cause the borrower to have to ‘jump through hoops’, increasing the time and money s/he must put out to get the loan,” observes the Microfinance Gateway.

“In fact, these transactions costs are frequently higher than the interest costs, which takes away the advantage to the borrower of the interest rate subsidy.”

Nonetheless, high rates are said to have taken a toll on certain borrowers in Guinea.

“It is not surprising that many of my former clients went bankrupt despite their good will. With a market that is so volatile and a currency that is depreciating so rapidly, it is not easy to succeed. Today, these people are hiding, to avoid humiliation,” said the Pride Finance employee.

Between September 2000 and April 2006, the Guinean currency lost almost 100 percent of its value against the dollar and the euro – the two most popular foreign currencies in the country.

“At Pride Finance we train our clients to allow them to manage their loans better. Despite this, there are some…who find themselves crippled with debt,” says Bah, who defies conventional wisdom on the topic of subsidies.

“Sincerely, I think that the best solution is to adopt a national micro-finance strategy aimed at a real reduction in poverty. And, more must be done to subsidise the micro-credit organisations so that they do not fail.”

Francis Sagno, a manager at CRG, says his institution also has measures in place to protect against defaulters.

“There are no loans without risks, and we ask our clients to give a certain number of guarantees in kind or in cash – to cover them (in the event that they default on repayments),” he notes.

“We make inquiries (about clients) before taking a decision (on whether to extend loans).”

In addition, every client who asks for a loan pays 10 dollars for the organisation to open a file on them – whether they are poor or well-to- do.

High interest rates notwithstanding, micro-credit institutions estimate that nearly 60 percent of clients succeed in repaying their loans. Women, who invest in the sale of basic goods, do best.

And in a country where poverty is widespread, thousands have turned to these organisations for help. Traditional banking institutions have typically failed to cater for those who try to make ends meet on less than a dollar a day.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 6 2005 (IPS)

Madeleine Gomou, a nurse in the village of Konia-Aviation, finds it all but impossible to do her job.

"We are living in complete deprivation here. There’s not even potable water. We have to take care of patients in spite of our lack of resources and the means to do tests worthy of the name," she told IPS, pointing to boxes of medicines that were expected to supply the surrounding population of 2,500 for just four days. The only food available at the dilapidated clinic where Gomou works was cassava paste.

In 2000, this settlement in southern Guinea was one of several towns and villages attacked by army deserters and rebels from Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF), amongst others.

The RUF members were backed by Charles Taylor, then president of Liberia, whose troops are also said to have participated in the attacks. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are neighbouring states.

The violence was prompted, in part, by a long-running dispute between Liberia and Guinea, which had allowed Liberian rebels to set up camp in its territory.

But, while a number of the attacks staged in 2000 reportedly targeted Liberian rebel bases in Guinea, others were apparently aimed at undermining the Conakry government. According to Mohamed Lamine Fofana, who claimed to represent the Guinean dissidents and RUF troops, the aim of the rebellion was to topple President Lansana Conte.

The violence led to the displacement of thousands of Guineans, in a region already home to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia who had fled civil war in their own countries.

International aid was promised to help the area get back on its feet. But Gomou – and many like her – are still waiting for this assistance to materialize.

"When the rebel attacks took place, we welcomed the Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees, hoping that the international community would come to our aid. Today, we realise that it was nothing more than promises because we are still short of everything in this village," she says.

About five kilometres away, the settlement of Bangoueta has a similar tale to tell. The primary school, which only caters for refugee children, lacks educational materials – and can only accept a limited number of children.

According to Guinea’s finance ministry, millions of dollars worth of damage was inflicted in the course of fighting five years ago.

Ari Toubo Ibrahim, the representative in Guinea of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, says disturbances in the south have had a knock-on effect as far as regional food security is concerned.

"The southern part of Guinea had always produced an agricultural surplus, especially in rice, and today it is seeking to make up its losses. It’s a terrible situation, not only for Guinea but also for villages in surrounding countries which are supplied from the (southern) region," he told IPS.

"Around Nzerekore alone, there are about 300,000 people native to the area who are living in true deprivation."

The arrival of additional refugees from neighbouring Ivory Coast, plagued by violence since a military coup in 1999, has only served to aggravate matters.

"It’s time that people understood there is an emergency here, especially when it comes to humanitarian needs," says Ibrahim.

While Guineans wait for attention to be paid to their plight, aid has been supplied to refugees – many of whom now enjoy a better standard of living than their hosts.

This could cause tensions between refugees and local inhabitants to flare, says United Nations Development Programme representative Kinsley Amaning, adding that refugee aid needs to be co-ordinated with the needs of Guineans.

"We asked three years ago that a mission come here to do an assessment. Now that it’s been done, we hope to see changes as quickly as possible, but we still need donor aid," he told IPS.

Michael Lindvall, head of mission for the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, admits that things could have been done differently.

"We admit we made mistakes. Our technical mission will soon prepare its report, and we hope that the local people will see results very soon."

For the moment, there appears to be little prospect of smoothing relations between Guineans and refugees by having the latter return home through voluntary repatriation programmes.

Most appear to believe that their countries are still too dangerous, even though peace accords have been struck in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"Personally, I feel I cannot go back to Liberia under present conditions. I have neither mother nor father there, and the news from the interior of the country is not good," Fanta Donso, a Liberian refugee from the Kola camp, in Nzerekore, told IPS.

But, while they remain in Guinea, the refugees are taking a toll on the environment.

"These populations have greatly contributed to damaging environments by cutting down large numbers of trees and hunting. We need to repair all that damage now," says Ibrahim.

Amaning says additional dangers lie in the failure to reintegrate into society most of the volunteer soldiers who helped Guinean troops combat the rebels in 2000.

"A solution to their problem has to be found so that they don’t end up being recruited into other wars and recreating instability in the sub-region," he notes. According to a military source in the Guinean capital, Conakry, there were about 8,000 such volunteers.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Nov 8 2004 (IPS)

Environmentalists have reacted with guarded caution to announcements of new plans to mine more bauxite and iron in Guinea. The plans were released after conclusion of the International Forum on the Mining Sector (FISM) held in this West African country last month.

Guinea Ecologie, the only non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Guinea working in this area, was not invited to the meeting, according officials.

‘’We were not at the FISM. Nevertheless, if all the practices the big mining companies have already agreed to abandon continue to hold, we’ll have little reason for worry. If not, there will be obvious environmental problems,’’ Mamadou Saliou Diallo, Guinea Ecologie’s coordinator, told IPS. He admitted, though, that he is ‘’concerned’’.

The meeting, held in the northeastern city of Boffa, about 130 kilometres from the Guinean capital Conakry, attracted multinational corporations such as Alcoa (the United States), Alcan (Canada), Rio Tinto (Britain) and EuroNimba with ambitious mining projects. It is hoped that these projects will stimulate Guinea’s economy, which is cash-strapped but rich in natural resources.

Alcoa Guinea general-director, Ibrahima Danso told IPS that his company wants ‘’to build a billion-dollar alumina refinery capable of processing 1.5 million metric tonnes per year in Kamsar, Boke,’’ in the north of the country, about 300 kilometres from Conakry.

Alcoa and Alcan already own a bauxite plant in the Boke area. Known as the Guinea Bauxite Company (CBG), it is the world’s biggest exporter of bauxite at 12 million tonnes a year.

Bauxite is the main ingredient needed to produce alumina, which is used in fabrication of aluminum metal.

‘’Once the bauxite is extracted from the substrata, teams of people go out and plant trees to restore the natural environment,’’ claimed Bachir Diallo, assistant director of the Sangaredi mine (also in the Boke area), which also belongs to the Guinea Bauxite Company.

There are fears that if the companies use dynamite in the construction of their mines, they will disturb the ecology of the wildlife living in the targeted areas.

‘’Dynamiting frightens animals and drives them away. It’s one of our primary concerns about mining projects. Take, for example, the viviparous toads of Mount Nimba, species which are unique to this southern region. They are unable to live outside of their natural environment,’’ said Ibrahima Sory Conte, of Guinea Ecologie.

Global Alumina Corporation (GAC), based in New York, also plans to build a two-billion-dollar refinery with an annual capacity of 2.8 million tonnes in the Sangaredi area.

EuroNimba and Rio Tinto want to develop iron mining at Mount Nimba (which straddles the Guinea, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire border) and in the Simandou Mountain Range. They plan to spend more than five billion dollars on this project.

The Simandou Range is a 100-kilometre-long mountain chain in Guinea’s southeast. Rio Tinto has discovered deposits that it estimates contain one billion metric tons of exceptionally pure (66 percent) deposits of iron ore there.

EuroNimba and Rio Tinto have begun negotiations to construct a 1,000-kilometre rail link between the country’s south and the deepwater port of Matakan, in the west, to transport the extracted minerals.

‘’Presently, we’re trying to at least minimise environmental damage, because there’s no such thing as zero risk,’’ Saliou Diallo, of Guinea Ecologie, explained.

More than 40 percent of Guinea’s people live below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day. In addition, only 16 percent of Guineans have access to electricity, according to figures released by the World Bank this year.

Mining company initiatives may be stymied by the country’s poor electrical supply. Guinea is hoping that a 2.5-billion-dollar plan to build a dam on the Konkoure River will resolve that problem.

‘’We cannot take the chance of fumbling this opportunity at a time when we have to fulfil people’s basic needs. In addition, the price of alumina and iron are looking quite good on the international market. We just hope that authorities are not just talking and that concrete plans materialise,’’ said Jacqueline Soumah, a Conakry-based economist.

Since early 2004, steel prices have risen 40 percent, and are expected to rise another 20 percent by the end of the year. This is mostly due to strong demand from China, according to the Oct. 28 edition of ‘’Les Echos’’, a daily newspaper published in France.

Rio Tinto has already requested and obtained a Rapid Evaluation Report from the NGO Conservation International indexing the more than 400 plant and animal species living along the Simandou Range.

‘’This area is our greatest concern, because it is home to species protected by international conventions,’’ Diallo added.

With an annual production of 17 million tonnes, Guinea is second only to Australia, which produces 55 million tonnes, in bauxite production.

While Guinean bauxite production experienced a relative increase since 1974, rising from 7.6 million to 17 million tonnes by 2003, it has not really seen a parallel gain in the production of alumina. Alumina production rose from 0.64 million tonnes to only 0.67 tonnes during the same period, according to the Ministry of Mines.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jul 13 2004 (IPS)

The debate on how best to provide anti-retroviral medication to HIV-positive citizens has taxed the ingenuity of many an African government – not least that of Guinea. However, the administration of this country now appears to be making citizens the victim of its own good intentions.

At present a government agency, the Central Pharmacy of Guinea (Pharmacie centrale de Guinée, PCG) is the sole importer of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) – drugs that are used to prolong the lives of people affected by AIDS-related diseases.

The Executive Secretary of the National Committee Against AIDS (Comité national de lutte contre le SIDA, CNLS), Mariama Djelo Barry, says the decision was taken because private firms that imported the drugs were charging too much for them.

“The authorities’ decision to forbid private companies from importing anti-retrovirals is an attempt to help the ill,” she told IPS. According to the CNLS, HIV prevalence in Guinea presently stands at about 2.8 percent for the adult population – and a frightening 55 percent rate for the country’s prostitutes.

Unfortunately, the PCG appears unable to keep up with the demand for ARVs in Guinea.

A consultant to the agency who chose to remain anonymous told IPS that “The PCG does not buy as much anti-retroviral medication as it should because the government insists that it be sold at the purchase price.”

“Unless the government decides to subsidize it,” the consultant added, “the PCG can only make a profit by selling imported medications. That’s why the agency prefers to give priority to other, more lucrative pharmaceutical products which are on the list of essential medications.”

These views are echoed by Lamine Conde, a representative of Laborex: the biggest private importer of pharmaceutical products in Guinea.

“They asked us to stop importing anti-retrovirals in 2001, but today we can see that the PCG, which often imported from India or China, does not have the means to buy these medications in large quantity. That’s why there’s a shortage on the market,” he told IPS. Laborex, which controls 80 percent of the market, is a subsidiary of the French firm, Pinault Printemps Redoute.

Previously, the company offered consumers in Guinea a combination ARV treatment that cost about seven times more than the treatment provided by the PCG.

The Director-General of the PCG, Houssein Bah, refused to give IPS comment for this article.

During the past decade, the price of a month’s supply of generic ARVs has decreased from about 487.5 dollars to 85 dollars – the price at which they are currently sold by the PCG. Previously, Laborex offered a combination of ARVs for about 600 dollars a month. More than 50 percent of the population in Guinea lives on less than a dollar a day, according to official statistics.

“The situation for those of us being treated with anti-retrovirals is worrying,” Tidiane Conte, an HIV-positive person told IPS.

“Now they’ve run out of stock, and brand-name products as opposed to generics are much more expensive. This is inadmissible,” he added.

In response to these shortages, Conte and Halima Camara – another person infected with HIV – created the Guinean Association of People Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS (Association guinéenne des personnes infectées et affectées par le VIH/SIDA, AGUIP+) in Feb. 2003. Both believe that their country’s ARV policy is a death sentence for Guineans living with AIDS.

Anger towards the government deepened recently, after citizens were mistakenly informed that a batch of ARVs funded by a Swiss Company at a cost of 30,000 dollars could be used to treat 100 recipients. (The donation was administered by the Maman Henriette Conte Foundation, named after Guinea’s first lady.)

Officials later discovered that World Health Organisation (WHO) regulations requiring that AIDS patients receive a cocktail of three ARVs meant fewer people could be treated for that amount of money.

“The total cost of the donation was 30,000 dollars. Since the WHO now requires tri-therapy (triple therapy – the use of three drugs), the number of beneficiaries was thereby reduced. Some of those receiving treatment didn’t understand this situation,” Barry explained.

As a result, various HIV-positive persons threatened to voluntarily infect other citizens in protest.

“I understand those people, they’re desperate – even though I would never threaten such a thing myself,” Conte told IPS.

Mohamed Cisse, the physician in charge of patient care at Donka Hospital in the capital of Conakry, Guinea’s main treatment center for AIDS, warned that HIV-persons who took this action might worsen their own predicament by exposing themselves to other strains of the virus.

“In Guinea, the most common strain of the virus is HIV1. To try to infect others means that you risk raising your viral load by exposing yourself to HIV2. The patient’s situation would then be even more desperate since the majority of anti-retrovirals which come into Guinea are not effective against HIV2,” he noted.

The CNLS, which coordinates the fight against AIDS in Guinea, has received 20 million dollars in aid from the International Agency from Development, a World Bank subsidiary – and two million dollars from the Guinean government.

“Sixty percent of this money is for training personnel, buying anti-retrovirals and logistics. The remaining 40 percent will be devoted to prevention,” says Barry.

However, it is estimated that Guinea requires more than 116 million dollars per year to meet the needs of those who have contracted HIV.

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Guinea applied for a 22 million-dollar grant from the Global Fund Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in 2002. The country received 11 million dollars, to be disbursed over a two-year period (2003-2004) – of which only 1.5 million dollars has been released.

“Since we started operating, five of our members have died,” said Camara, of AGUIP+.

“Today we’re still up and running, thanks to support from the GTZ (the German overseas aid agency), which gave us 90,000 euros (almost 112,000 dollars) in April 2003 for our budget. We have an 18-month programme. Part of this money allows us to provide care for 30 of our members.”

“In addition to our 57 infected members, about 30 healthy people also participate in our activities as individuals affected by HIV/AIDS,” she added.

(* ATT EDS: The story filed 22:58 GMT Jul. 13 requires an addition in paragraph 27. Please note that the 90,000 euros referred to by Halima Camara equates to about 112,000 dollars.)

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 26 2004 (IPS)

Under a makeshift tent in the Laine refugee camp in southern Guinea, Charlesetta Kollie, a Liberian refugee, buckles down to teach dressmaking to a new group of apprentices.

Kollie’s nine students have four sewing machines with which to stitch together women’s garments – the camisoles and pagnes – that are common in the sub-region. Sometimes the women learn how to mend torn dresses. Their target is to learn how to sew in order to have a trade when they return to Liberia.

Kollie, Yassah Sakie, and Namini Tinna are among the Liberian refugees participating in the Laine camp’s Gender-Based Violence programme (GBV) in Guinea. While at the camp, the women try to stitch their lives back together, despite Liberia’s longstanding civil war and problems inherent to being a refugee.

Before she fled her country, Kollie ran a training centre in Liberia. That life now seems a distant memory, as she takes stock of her present living conditions and reveals her nostalgia for the past.

“Even though I had everything I wanted, I left Liberia after Charles Taylor was elected (president) in 1997. I first fled to Gbinta in Cote d’Ivoire, before the war in that country forced me to flee to Guinea,” she told IPS. Kollie left Liberia as rebels were closing in on Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

“One of my three children got sick and died during the trip. I no longer hear anything from my family, but my husband and my surviving children are with me in Laine,” Kollie said. “I was fortunate that they recruited me as a sewing instructor, and I’ve been teaching other refugees in the Gender-Based Violence programme ever since.”

Compared to Kollie’s, the life of 30-year-old Yassah Sakie, who was captured and raped by a soldier in the regular Liberian army, has been a living hell.

“I was taken prisoner because one of the soldiers claimed I was the wife of a Krahn (the ethnic group of Samuel Doe, the former Liberian dictator who was executed by rebel leader Prince Johnson on Sep. 9, 1990). I was raped and left in the bushes. That experience had serious repercussions for me. But I’ve been able to reorganise myself and begin a new life,” Sakie told IPS.

Before enrolling in the course, Sakie said, “I had no hope, but now, I’d like to learn something that will help me take care of myself, as well as my three children. Sometimes my children have no food, clothing, or shoes.”

The programme, which helps the refugees to heal the trauma of war by teaching them a trade, has a budget of over 50,000 dollars. And most of it comes from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

One of the students, Namini Tinna, a 19-year-old mother, wants to pursue a regular education. “I’m learning to sew, but I’d like to be educated and be independent. My greatest wish is to succeed in life and reconnect with my parents, from whom I was separated in 1998,” she told IPS.

Besides domestic violence and rape, the trauma of war resurfaces often, especially among women, in Laine camp, which is situated within kilometers of the Liberian border.

Fatoumata Diariou Tounkara, the press officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Guinea, says incidents in the camp range from domestic violence to rape.

“Between January and March 2004, there were 391 incidents of violence against women in Laine, 18 of which involved sexual abuse, four of which rape and 95 of which domestic violence,” she told IPS.

“We provide psychological, medical and legal assistance for the survivors of violence. In the case of rape, we provide medical treatment to prevent undesired pregnancies and HIV/AIDS,” Marie-Aimee Marita, a GBV course instructor, explained to IPS.

“We file complaints against the perpetrators and sometimes we succeed in having them prosecuted,” she added. Some of their successes include the complaints filed in the 18 rape cases. And refugees who are found guilty of rape are sent to prison, and serve out their time in Guinea, Marita told IPS.

The programme was set up by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an American non-governmental organisation, with the help of UNICEF. The IRC is a refugee agency that provides help to children as well as adults. The programme was started in Guinea in early 1990s to help refugees who are psychologically scarred by war.

At Laine camp some refugees had become mute because of the psychological trauma they had endured. Others have difficulty speaking about their past. The IRC was founded in 1933 at the suggestion of physicist Albert Einstein to help opponents of Nazism in Germany.

In 2003, UNICEF contributed 16,000 dollars for a legal training programme in Guinea. The programme provides refugees with awareness about their legal rights both inside and outside of refugee camps.

For her part, Kollie says, “I’d like to continue to do the same thing in Liberia as soon as the situation permits. The GBV programme should be continued there.”

Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who visited Guinea on Apr 29-May 1, announced that Liberian refugees would soon be returning home.

Of the 80,000 refugees living in Laine, more than 32,000 are Liberians. At the height of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean wars, the UNHCR helped shelter more than 600,000 refugees in this impoverished West African nation.

“We’ve already repatriated more than 80 percent of the Sierra Leoneans. The Liberian refugees need to begin thinking about returning home,” Lubbers told IPS.

Another refugee camp in Kouankan, 801 kilometres from Conakry, also received Liberians who fled at the height of that country’s conflict. All Liberian refugees are currently in Laine camp, or living in Guinean villages and cities. There is, however, one thing that unites them: the end of war in Liberia, so they can peaceably return home.

“We have to prepare the groundwork in Liberia, and that’ll take some time. It means that repatriation efforts will not begin before January 2005,” Lubbers said.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Sep 22 2003 (IPS)

Idiatou Balde, in her late 30s, exhibits and sells indigo-tinted fabrics in an up market in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

Balde, a chemical engineer, who runs a local organisation called ”Walinderin” (let’s help each other, in a local language), is a divorcee whose trajectory in life is similar to that of hundreds of other Guinean women who have refused to pay heed to the dictates of men.

Although in the forefront of the struggle for gender equality in Guinea, where Aug. 27 has been set aside as a day of remembrance of the revolt by a group of women against the late dictator Sekou Toure, women are still the targets of domestic violence.

Toure ruled Guinea with an iron fist from 1958 to 1984.

After passing her secondary school examinations, Balde married a man who refused to allow her to continue her education.

”At that time I was pregnant, and I used to walk more than two kilometres to get to school. I had to wake up very early in the morning to pound the millet, fetch water and collect firewood. The entire village went to fetch water from the same source, which was about one kilometre away. It was under these conditions that I got my school certificate in 1982,” she recalls.

When Balde decided in 1982 to resume her studies at the University of Conakry, her husband cut off all support. ”It was then that I decided to devote myself to my studies,” she says. ”My husband did not physically stop me, but he did everything he could to make me quit. He wanted me to go back to the village and work in the fields.”

”After obtaining my diploma at the University of Conakry in 1989, I went back to see him and he refused to take me back as his wife. I finally surrendered to my fate and took custody of our child. The divorce took place in 1994. I have not remarried since,” Balde says.

She got a job with a private company before establishing Walinderin.

”I found that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the salary they were offering me. After I participated in a seminar on ‘the entrepreneurial spirit’ I decided to form this organisation. Today, I have a much higher income and decided to devote myself wholly to Walinderin”.

Ramatoulaye Sow, who married a former presidential pilot, fought with her husband when she was pregnant. In 1996 she told the court that the violent abuse inflicted upon her by her husband, which sometimes included blows to the belly, forced her to get an abortion.

The Minister of Social Affairs, Hadja Mariama Aribot, has acknowledged the phenomenon of domestic violence on national television. ”Every year we receive hundreds of complaints from women who are the victims of domestic violence. These are women who are thrown out of the house as soon as their husbands take a second wife; these are women who are deprived of their allowance for the same reasons; these are women whose inheritances are stolen,” Aribot said recently.

Although the overwhelming majority of Guinean women, who make up 52 percent of the population, are not aware of it, polygamy has been declared illegal since 1968. Guinea’s population is about eight million, and most of the people are illiterate, the majority of them being women.

According to figures from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), only 41 percent of adults in Guinea know how to read. And among these adults, 40 percent are women.

These disparities are obvious in everyday life and contribute to keeping women at home, in a country, which lacks a qualified labour pool.

”Since the law is not enforced, we decided that since it is two consenting adults who are getting married, why not ask them while they’re signing the marriage certificate to choose between polygamy and monogamy,” Aribot suggested.

For Ibrahima Bah, a teacher, ”women who are the victims of domestic violence are unaware of their rights. If they were, things would not be the same for their husbands”.

Mahmoud Doumbouya, a civil administrator in Conakry, says ”it is the women who allow themselves to be relegated to the back burner. If you sample 1,000 Guinean women, you’ll find only one who would fight to contribute to the family’s income”.

Most Guinean women rely on their husbands’ income.

Doumbaouya says that ”women should first break the cultural barriers which keep them backwards”.

To change the situation, Guinea’s major political parties have initiated dialogue with the government without one single woman at the table. ”This is a perfect illustration of what I’m saying,” Doumbouya says, referring to the patronising attitude of the men who run Guinea’s political parties.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Aug 27 2003 (IPS)

Aissatou Bah, 17, used to dress in the latest fashions and frequent trendy nightclubs in the capital Conakry just like any other girl of her age.

Her neighbours at Koloma, a suburb of Conakry, used to consider her as a wild girl.

But one day, Bah disappeared, only to resurface several months later, covered from head to toe in a black robe that revealed only her hands and face.

Her lifestyle, too, has changed.

Bah had enrolled in one of the Islamic fundamentalist schools which are mushrooming in the capital.

”The only time women should appear uncovered in public are the day they are born, the day they go to live with their husbands and the day they die and are put in their graves,” Bah told IPS.

Bah’s views about marriage also were too simplistic. ”I’m ready to marry anyone who is deeply committed to Allah (God). It doesn’t matter whether he’s one-eyed, blind, armless, or lame; what’s important is that he is committed to Allah,” she told IPS.

Bah terminated her studies prior to her transformation by the fundamentalist school, travelled to Sierra Leone and married her cousin. No one has heard from her again.

Islamic fundamentalism has been taking root in Guinea, a country of about eight million of which 80 percent is Muslim, during the past decade. Islamic fundamentalist groups have become more powerful in the country, even though Guinean authorities do not seem to take them seriously.

In the streets of Ratoma, Matam and Matoto, all suburbs of Conakry, some women seem to have less luck than Bah. In addition to their long black robe, they also wear a thin veil which entirely covers their face.

The women say they want to return to ”original Islam”. They wear socks to hide their feet, and are always accompanied by a male relative.

Their presence is also being felt in remote regions such as Nzerekore, 954 kilometres south of Conakry, which has a strong Christian majority, and Pita, 356 kilometres north of the capital.

Yamoussa Camara, an Islamic sociologist, says ”Guinean society is facing a moral crisis accentuated by economic hardships. That’s why these people fall back on simplistic solutions in order to find their identity”.

”The fundamentalists often prey on weak individuals whom they manipulate. Apparently, the tactic is working since the phenomenon is spreading,” says Camara.

Hadja Soumah, a housewife, is also worried about the growth of fundamentalism. ”The last time I saw one of my friends in a veil, I pulled her into my courtyard for a chat. It was only with great difficulty that I could remove her veil to look at her face. She said she was afraid of being seen by a man while her face was uncovered”.

”These women are being forced into Islamic fundamentalism by their relatives. It’s dangerous to impose a way of life on people against their will,” she says.

Oumar, a friend of Bah, suspects that Bah was also forced by her relatives to embrace fundamentalism. ”She lost her father when she was very young and her elderly, sick mother lives in the village. She was living in Conakry with her half brothers from the same father and they’re all fundamentalists. They’re the ones who brainwashed her to get her onto this path,” he says.

”They have a speech on cassettes that they force potential converts to listen to. The speech is so strong, so captivating, a naive person gets carried away by it,” Oumar says.

Hundreds of Islamic fundamentalist groups operate in Guinea, a poor West African country where 55 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of less than one U.S. dollar a day.

Often the fundamentalists prefer living in communities in carefully selected neighborhoods where almost all of the women cover themselves with the burka, the long black robe.

Boubacar Barry, a Koranic teacher in Conakry, says ”Guinean society is drowning in vice and the futile things of this world. To ensure the youth a future, we must get closer to God”.

”Life would be much easier if everyone conformed to the precepts of the Koran,” he says.

Stringent religious teachings, calling for dress codes for girls, are common on Guinean television.

So far, the government has not reacted to the activities of Islamic fundamentalism and seems to have decided to let nature takes its course.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
NZEREKORE, Southern Guinea, May 27 2003 (IPS)

Sheltered only by tents in the sweltering heat, Maika Kourouma describes life in Laine Refugee Camp as a nightmare.

She claims that snakebites, malaria and prostitution are rampant in the camp, which is located some 1,000 kilometres south of the capital, Conakry. The camp is run by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In her tent, which she shares with 50 other refugees, her two small girls, all running a high fever, lie on the ground beside her. The atmosphere is morose. ”My two little girls were bitten by snakes and I have not been able to get them medical care,” Kourouma, a refugee from Liberia, told IPS.

”The same thing happened to my daughter and I just don’t know where to turn. Look at her, she’s burning up,” says Mamy Yassa Dionsi, also from Liberia.

A few metres away, another little girl in rags lies motionless on a mat. Her dry lips, her crossed arms and her closed eyes show how malaria has sapped her strength. ”This is our life. We cannot even look after our children when they are sick,” says her father, in tears.

Akeem Kollie, another Liberian, has a wound on his arm. ”A snake bit me. I’ve been trying to get it treated for two weeks, but UNHCR only offers me tablets; paracetamol and chloroquine since I don’t have any money to seek better treatment,” claims Kollie.

The Laine Camp, which was built for 6,000 refugees, now has more than 19,500 refugees, mostly from Liberia.

To the chagrin of the refugees, the rainy season is around the corner, and some of the tents are not properly sealed.

Not even the recent visit by Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, had relieved the pervasive sadness. ”We’ll do everything we can to get you home as soon as the political and military situation allows it,” he told the refugees.

Lubbers urged the Liberian leader, Charles Taylor to end the suffering of his citizens.

”The refugees’ plight will not improve until peace comes to Liberia. But it now seems that in order to attain it, Taylor must accept that he can no longer solely control his country. That means there needs to be power-sharing between the different political and military forces,” Lubbers declared.

Jean Philippe Ago is one of the few Ivorian refugees at Laine, which was built specially to house Liberians. ”I’ve been living at Laine for four months. Before, I was at Man (in western Cote d’Ivoire), but the war brought me here,” he says.

”All the compatriots I meet complain about the food – the corn semolina – that we’re not used to, distributed by the World Food Programme. It gives us diarrhoea and stomach aches,” he explains.

Aissatou Bamba Traore, another refugee from Cote d’Ivoire, says ”the Ivorians are having problems adapting and are complaining about health conditions in the camps”.

The refugees claim their diet contains neither fish nor meat and that each person receives only a litre of oil per month.

The majority of Ivorian refugees are currently in the Nonon Transit Centre in Yomou, 1,029 kilometres south of Conakry.

Ibrahima Diane, a UNHCR public relations officer at Kissidougou, 601 kilometres southwest of Conakry, says: "To provide medical care for the refugees, UNHCR has set up a system where if a person has a minor illness, he’s taken to a certain health centre. But if he’s seriously ill, he’s taken to the hospital”.

Diane says only a few ”isolated” cases of snakebites and malaria have not been treated medically.

Issiago Toure, a UNHCR protection officer, also disputes the refugees’ claims. ”The new refugees always complain more than the old ones. I know of refugee families who built their own homes out of planks and who lead a much more decent life now than they did when they came here,” he maintains.

”The truth is, those in the camps know the desperate condition they were in when we received them at the border,” says Toure.

Excerpt:

By 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.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Guinea, 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, which is known by its French acronym, OGDH.

Kindia is 216 kilometres east of Conakry, Guinea’s capital.

Diallo says, a delegation travelled to Kindia recently, accompanied by members of the OGDH, to verify the information. ‘’We 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.”

Sekou Toure died in 1984, after ruling Guinea, with an iron rod, 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 the former 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 has been renamed 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.

It all 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 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 last week.

Diallo says the mountain, surrounding the mass graves, is 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 veterinarian based in Conakry.

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.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Guinea, 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, which is known by its French acronym, OGDH.

Kindia is 216 kilometres east of Conakry, Guinea’s capital.

Diallo says, a delegation travelled to Kindia recently, accompanied by members of the OGDH, to verify the information. ‘’We 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.”

Sekou Toure died in 1984, after ruling Guinea, with an iron rod, 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 the former 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 has been renamed 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.

It all 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 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 last week.

Diallo says the mountain, surrounding the mass graves, is 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 veterinarian based in Conakry.

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.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Sep 18 2002 (IPS)

Some 30,000 women will benefit from a major literacy campaign in Guinea.

Women make up 52 percent of Guinea’s eight million people.

The campaign heightened during the Guinean Women’s Day, held on Aug 27 in Conakry where a three-year literacy programme was launched.

The government did not reveal the cost of the programme, which will be financed jointly with the UN Development Programme (UNDP). Some 2,000 volunteers have already been mobilised for the campaign.

Hadja Mariama Aribot, the Minister for Women, Child and Social Welfare, says the campaign aims ‘’to promote culture, literacy and job training for women”.

Women are often discriminated against in Guinea. And most of them are unaware of their basic rights because they can neither read nor write. “This year, we chose as a theme for the campaign, ‘Women’s Struggle Against Poverty Through Learning How To Read’, ” says Aribot.

Aissatou Diallo, a shipping agent in Conakry, believes that “projects, like eradicating illiteracy, must always be carried out, through. Many programmes have failed here because of a laissez-faire attitude and deficient management on the part of our leaders”.

Kadiatou Bobo Diallo Bah, a dyer, believes “it’s necessary for a woman to know at least how to read and write. Otherwise, like in my job, you feel you’re on a different level from the others. We must not remain idle because every trade has its value”.

Like Bah, Sano Mmah Keita, who is following a textile course, took advantage of an introductory Internet course, which brought together 60 women with a modicum of French language skills.

Oumar Diop, who is involved with the course, says “the women received instruction in Sosso, Malinke, Peulh and dialects from Guinea’s Forest region”.

“Some of them had e-mail addresses for their children or other close relatives living abroad but did not know how to use them,” recalls Diop.

Bah, who is one of the students, says “the Internet training was very useful for us because it allowed us to get in touch with members of our family abroad. Even without establishing contacts, it opened up many doors and prospects for us”, especially for women who are in the craft or textile industry.

Of a population of eight million, 62 percent of Guineans are illiterate. Of those, 80 percent are women. At the same time, there are disparities between Guinea’s four regions.

The lowest rate of female illiteracy occurs in the Lower Guinea. In Conakry, it is 73 percent. In Upper Guinea, the rate is 87 percent. Upper Guinea is considered the country’s poorest region, in spite of its enormous gold and diamond reserves.

In Guinea’s Forest region, considered to be the “richest” prior to rebel attacks in 2000, which ravaged large commercial cities such as Gueckedou, the rate of female illiteracy is 78 percent, as compared to 86 percent for Middle Guinea.

“Guinea’s woes began when President (Ahmed) Sekou Toure led the country. He devalued education (in French) and imposed local dialects. Thus, in Middle Guinea, people studied Peulh; in Upper Guinea, Malinke; in Lower Guinea, Sosso; and in Forest Guinea, you had the choice between Kissi and several other dialects. This system reduced the general level of literacy and made the situation more difficult to rectify,” says veterinarian Adamson Camara.

In 1958, Sekou Toure demanded independence for Guinea and broke all links with France, the former colonial power. France reacted by pulling out all its teachers and skilled workers from the West African country.

But, since a new regime took over more than 19 years ago, it has invested large sums of money to bring down the rate of the country’s illiteracy to a more acceptable level.

Thus, the rate of school enrolment for girls, which was 28 percent in 1989, reached 47 percent in 2000, according to the latest official statistics.

Some schools still do not have teachers, and many French teachers have insufficient skills in the language to teach it properly. Recently, the National Office of Education held a workshop for those teachers to improve their level of competency.

‘’Illiteracy among women is the reason why certain traditional customs, such as female genital mutilation persist,” says Aribot. “Prostitution and the exploitation of women are often due to ignorance”.

“Unfortunately, traditions die-hard. Some people continue to circumcise their daughters. With lengthy educational campaigns, we’ll continue to fight against this ancestral practice which predates Islam,” she says. “We will not abandon the fight”.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Aug 27 2002 (IPS)

Guinea has more than 13,000 children, orphaned by AIDS, who face frequent discrimination, according to a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The organisation, Stat Views International, shed light on the plight of the orphans during a recent conference held in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, to discuss the results of the first national study on HIV-infection rates in Guinea.

It noted that the number of AIDS orphans could surpass 92,000 by 2010 if steps were not taken to curtail the epidemic.

Djenabou Mdiaye Fofana, of the National Committee Against AIDS, says AIDS orphans are often discriminated against in Guinea, where the population knows little about the disease.

Dr. Bintou Bamba, president of the Association of Guinean Women Against HIV/AIDS, a non-governmental organisation, says “the problem of AIDS orphans is complex. Creating orphanages for them is not a solution because it doesn’t resolve their problems. In Africa, where extended families exist, we need to find a way to raise these children without damaging their psyches”.

‘’These orphans often face rejection. Right now we are dealing with the case of a woman whose husband died of AIDS. She, herself, has now fallen ill from the disease and her two little girls are likely to become orphans. We are trying desperately to convince her family to take the children in. People think that if they come near her, they will also get sick, which is clearly not the case,” says Bamba.

“We are presently developing a comprehensive project to provide support and education for these children, as well as find them foster families. It will be carried out over the course of a ten-year period,” says Fofana.

“Initially, there will be a five-year project which will provide health care and education for children four to 12 years of age; those from 14 to 16 will be given the opportunity to attend trade apprenticeship centres to facilitate their social and professional independence. But I must note that this is all still in the planning stages. We’re in the process of smoothing out the last few details. After that, we plan to seek funding,” she says.

“In any case, there are only two possibilities for these children: either we help them remain with their extended families, or send them to institutions,” she says.

Bamba says they “are currently negotiating with (pharmaceutical company) Laboratoires Boringer to supply us with Nevirapine, a drug which reduces mother-to-child infection. We hope we’ll be able to administer it to pregnant women living with the disease for free. But even if we can’t, it only costs four dollars. With the help of the government and the donors, we should somehow be able to obtain it so we can save lives”.

Former social services minister Dr. Mariama Djelo Barry, says “their goal is to ensure that the AIDS orphans are cared for from a social as well as medical perspective so we can provide them with an appropriate developmental environment, while not forgetting the parents who may still be alive”.

‘’We need to do a thorough accounting of all AIDS orphans and figure out who has lost only a single parent and who has lost both, in order to act more effectively,” she says.

With a population of eight million, the rate of HIV infection in Guinea is 2.8 percent. This figure has surpassed the UN’s 1.7 percent estimate for 2002.

Aliou Barryk, Stat Views International director, says “When the rate of HIV/infection reaches two percent in a country, AIDS has to be treated as a public health problem. If in 2001 we counted 114,000 HIV positive individuals, the number could rise to 290,000 by 2010”.

“This year (2002), 13,800 deaths have already been attributed to AIDS. In 2010, this number will reach 119,000 if there is no effective intervention,” he says.

Guinea has just been admitted to a programme that provides countries with anti-retroviral drugs at minimal cost. The lowest price for a course of treatment per month is about 300,000 Guinean francs (about 150 U.S. dollars), a figure out of reach of the average citizen. Around 60 percent of Guineans live below the poverty line on less than one U.S. dollar per day.

Djelo Barry says she is “concerned and worried” by the extent of HIV infections among sex workers: which is 42 percent nationally and 55 percent for the capital, Conakry.

She believes that sex workers should be licensed so that they become subject to regular medical checks.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jul 12 2002 (IPS)

Guinea’s ruling party has won the country’s parliamentary elections, with 85 seats out of 114.

Seventy-two percent of voters turned out to cast ballots in the Jun 30 elections, according to Moussa Solano, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralisation and Security.

Provisional results of the poll were made public this week.

This week’s result is an improvement for the ruling Unity and Progress Party, which in 1995 won only 71 of the seats contested. The main opposition Union for Progress and Renewal party, which is led by Siradiou Diallo, won only 20 seats in the Jun 30 elections.

And both Jean-Marie Dore’s Union for the Progress of Guinea and the Democratic Party of Guinea-African Democratic Rally, in power under the late dictator Sekou Toure, won three seats each.

The National Patriotic Alliance obtained two seats and the Party of Unity and Democracy one seat. Both parties are closely allied with President Lansana Conte.

Immediately, following the announcement, Diallo, who is the president of Union for Progress and Renewal party, refused to accept the results. “We are very unhappy with the results. Giving us 20 deputies is their (ruling party’s) way of throwing us some crumbs. We know that we are entitled to more seats,” he says.

Diallo claims that the polls were rigged. “We travelled to the country’s interior and everyone told us that there had been a lot of ballot-box stuffing than it had never been before. But we are not going to file suit because we know that all the members of the Supreme Court, which needs to approve the provisional tally, is in the president’s pocket,” he claims.

In their decision to contest the poll, Diallo says his party “had thought that the elections would be free and fair. But after seeing the results, we realised that we were wrong.” Diallo is one of four main opposition leaders — out of seven — who refused to boycott the Jun 30 poll.

Mohamed Diane, of the Guinean People’s party, says “the fact that the authorities waited ten days to announce the results proves that it’s a farce. We were right in boycotting the elections.”

“In Guinea, fraud is built into the system of government,” claims Dore.

But political analysts blame the poor showing by the country’s fragmented opposition on their failure to field a single candidate to challenge President Conte who has ruled this impoverished West African country of about seven million people for about 23 years.

According to the provisional results, six out of the 12 parties that fielded candidates in the Jun 30 elections will be represented in the new parliament.

The ruling party now controls more than two-thirds of the votes necessary to amend the constitution or pass bills initiated by the government.

In his weekly column in “L’Enqueteur”, Sekou Koureissy Conde, Guinea’s former security minister, wrote, “Constitutionally speaking, we are in a dictatorship”.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jun 17 2002 (IPS)

Pharmacists in Guinea have launched a campaign to clean up the West African country of illicit pharmaceutical drugs.

The campaign began during the May 28-Jun 3 meeting, on ‘Awareness Campaign on the Danger of Illicit Drugs’, in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

In Conakry, drugs can be purchased from five main markets over the counter, a practice that is posing serious public health problems, as most of the vendors have no qualifications as pharmacists.

Enraged by the practice, Dr. Fode Drame, president of the Guinean Physicians, says “one cannot call oneself a pharmacist without the proper credentials. When you see the damage that certain medicines cause, such as poisoning, acute allergies, even cardiac arrest, you realise how important it is to end this illicit sale of drugs, which today represents 66 to 70 percent of the market in Guinea”.

“Our campaign also involves improving the image of the country’s pharmaceutical distribution network,” says Dr. Mamadou Cammara, vice-president of the Guinean Pharmacists. “We also promote generic medications, which offer the same results as trademark drugs but are less expensive.”

The high cost of drugs has boosted illegal sales in Guinea – an impoverished West African country of about seven million people – where vendor prices are often half those in the pharmacy. For example, a diabetes drug, which fetches 63,000 Guinean francs (around 31.5 U.S. dollars) in a pharmacy, costs 24,000 francs (around 12 U.S. dollars) at the vendor.

Many Guineans, like journalist Moustapha Tchida, say they prefer buying cheap drugs from the vendor. “Pharmacies are first of all too expensive. The last time I went in for a splitting headache, I bought an aspirin that cost me three times more than what I would have purchased from the vendor. And the aspirin didn’t relieve my headache, so I went to a Chinese neighbour of mine who sells drugs in the street. He suggested some cheap tablets and the trick worked,” says Tchida.

Dr. Drame warns that, “Even if good quality product can be located in the market, there are risks if bought from someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Sometimes, the dealer himself does not know that the product has expired.”

A recent survey, by pharmaceutical wholesalers, found that “58 percent of the medications dumped on the illicit market have no active ingredient, and contain an overdose of 16 percent or more.”

Some accuse physicians, whom they claim are in league with the country’s 25-million-dollar pharmaceutical industry, of prescribing medications that are much more expensive than generics. “Of course, not every drug has a generic equivalent, but a doctor who does such a thing is unethical and unprofessional,” says Dr. Drame.

“What’s strange in Guinea is that regulated pharmacists are going broke, while the wholesalers are raking it in,” says a pharmacist in Conakry.

Fatoumata Sylla, a vendor in Conakry, says she gets her products through “a lady at a wholesale firm. But in any case, I do this job because I want to enjoy a good standard of living”.

Cautioning the public, Dr. Cammara says, “You can indeed find decent products in the market. But you have to know that most of them are stolen at the airport or the seaport. This problem concerns professionals as well as non-professionals”.

In Benin, at least a tonne of drugs have been seized by health officials and will be destroyed, according to the director of the country’s pharmacies and laboratories, Abdoulaye Idrissou.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 10 2002 (IPS)

Guinea’s main opposition parties have ruled out taking part in the country’s legislative elections scheduled for Jun 30.

“Without a real structure to guarantee the administration’s neutrality in the elections, it’s useless to participate when the results are already known,” says former Prime Minister, Sidya Toure, who is the leader of the opposition Union of Republican Forces (URF).

“We’re not prepared to send our supporters out there to die for nothing,” says Mohamed Diane, secretary general of the Guinea People’s Union (GPU).

But the Union for Progress and Renewal (UPR), which is a small opposition party, says it will participate in the polls. Its candidate Ba Mamdou came in second after Lansana Conte in the 1998 presidential election.

“We’ve decided to negotiate with the government and reach a compromise. Since certain concessions were made in the opposition’s favour, the UPR has chosen to participate in the elections,” says the party’s leader, Siradiou Diallo.

“Our concern now is that the National Electoral Commission appears not to be prepared for the June 30 elections. That’s why we’ve suggested that the election be postponed until the end of the year,” he adds.

Jean-Marie Dore, of the Union for the Progress of Guinea (UPG), a small opposition party, also weighed in on the question of participation. “No-show politics serves any purpose. Participation in the legislative election is vital,” he says.

The government is celebrating the split in the opposition’s ranks, which grouped under a loose alliance known as the Movement for Democratic Alternative. Following the split, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralisation, and Security, Moussa Solano, says, “there’s no longer such a thing as a small party in Guinea any more”.

Last November, the alliance agreed to boycott the June elections. That time, they had united to stop a referendum to amend the constitution so that Conte could run for a third term in 2003.

Abdoulaye Kandet Ba, an economist, says “the opposition’s decision not to participate in the elections is a bad thing for the country”.

Concurring, Bintou Camara, a law student, says “the opposition should think carefully before deciding to boycott the elections.”

For the Guinean League for Human Rights, however, “transparency in the June elections is the benchmark of stability”.

Taking oath of office on Monday, Rachid Toure, chairperson of Electoral Commission, said he would “carry out his duties in the best interests of the people, and prove his impartiality”. All 52 members of the Commission also took oath of the office.

“For the moment, only Japan has offered a cheque for 500,000 U.S. dollars (around 500 million Guinean francs) for the elections. Other partners, such as the European Union, the United States have yet to write their cheques,” says a government official.

Twenty-one political parties competed in the 1995 multiparty elections, which gave birth to the outgoing 101-member Parliament.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Guinea, Feb 21 2002 (IPS)

Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in Guinea have refused to return home, citing security reasons.

“As long as we don’t have any absolute guarantees that the present process will bring peace to our land, we cannot go home,” says Fatimoh Sillah, a young Sierra Leonean who has been living in Guinea for five years.

“We will not risk returning to Sierra Leone while the government tolerates the presence of executioners. We’ve no guarantee that they’ll respect their commitment to remain unarmed. You’ll see, as soon as the war crimes court issues its first sentences, the rebel chiefs will feel threatened and return to the bush,” adds Mohamed Bangura, a refugee in Conakry, the Guinean capital.

The United Nations has set up a tribunal in Freetown to try Sierra Leone’s war criminals.

The main factor preventing Liberian refugees from returning home is the ongoing rebellion in Loffa and Wonjimai counties in the country’s north.

Moise Edwards, a tea vendor in Conakry, told IPS: “I prefer to stay in Guinea rather than return to Liberia, where I lost everything, including members of my family, during the first war (1989-1997). Everyone can see that the war has resumed in the north”.

A Liberian girl, who asked not to be named, expressed a similar view: “I won’t go back to Liberia because of the precarious security situation there”.

With the fighting between the Guinean army and the rebels who both Conakry and the United Nations said were supported by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone and the government of Liberia, most of the 500,000 refugees chose to return to their respective countries. But others have decided to remain in Guinea.

Most of the Sierra Leonean refugees live in Sembakouyah, in central Guinea, and in Kountayah, Boreyah, and Telikoro, in east of the country, about 560 kilometres from Conakry.

Furthermore, 78,000 refugees have settled around Youmou, Beyla, Lola and Nzerekore, near the border with Liberia.

The presence of refugees has created problems such as violence toward women and difficulties in obtaining access to education. In collaboration with some 60 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the UNHCR is trying to ease the plight of the refugees.

Odette Ahounou, a UNHCR official in Nzerekore region, says “Among certain ethnic groups it is not very important to send their girls to school. And even if their parents agree to send them to school, they rarely continue past the first five or six years and go on to secondary. Their parents prefer to get them right into a trade”.

Aminata Camara, of Nzerekore refugee camps, says “some single women who have lost their husbands have become prostitutes”.

The UNHCR says it is committed to improving the conditions of refugees, whose presence in certain areas has paved the way for the creation of weekly markets and the opening of rural paths.

Guinea has received assistance for refugees from the international community since the outbreak of the war in Liberia in 1989 and the war in Sierra Leone in 1991. At present, Guinea has more than 500,000 refugees who fled combat zones where thousands of civilians were savagely mutilated.

The refugees have been subjected to military and police harassment, especially after the first rebel attacks in Guinea in Sep 2000, which officially caused the deaths of more than 1,600 persons and the damage to property worth more than 400 million U.S. dollars.

Many refugees say they are waiting for the first tangible results of the international community efforts to bring peace to Sierra Leone before they return home.

“Unfortunately, the war, which has resumed in northern Liberia at the border with Guinea, has not helped things”, noted a Guinean army officer, who refused to be named.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jan 21 2002 (IPS)

Rights groups have stepped up pressure to combat the growing cases of pedophilia and child prostitution in Guinea.

“Something shocking is going on in Conakry (the capital of Guinea) these days,” says Hadja Djelo Barry, head of the Conakry- based Coordinating Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (CPTAFE).

“At night, at certain intersections, you can observe children street-walking, cruising for clients. Such acts of pedophilia are serious and unacceptable, especially in a Muslim country like Guinea,” she says.

Barry is known for her campaign against female genital mutilation in Guinea, where the majority of the people are Muslims.

CPTAFE leaders, announcing their campaign on state-run television on Jan 7, said they would target Conakry’s suburbs of Coleah, Ratoma and the port area, which are often invaded by a horde of teenage girls and boys at nightfall.

Their clients usually spirit them away, far from prying eyes, in vehicles.

Simon Togba, a waiter in a bar, told IPS: “One day, I saw a little girl at the Port of Conakry. She sold oranges and was really very, very young. I told her jokingly that I was going to marry her. I was really surprised when she showed up later that day at the warehouse which was our business’s base of operations”.

“We had no problem having sex. I could hardly believe that such a young girl could be so developed. I gave her 500 Guinean francs (less than a quarter of a dollar),” says Togba.

“To combat this evil, CPTAFE has decided to undertake a similar campaign to the one conducted on female genital mutilation. We are pleased to say that because of our anti- excision programme, hundreds of women for whom excision was a primary source of income have, with our help, thrown away their knives and taken up other occupations,” explains Morissanda Kouyate, the committee’s general secretary.

“Poverty is the cause of much of pedophilia. Some parents encourage their children to take up prostitution. It’s very serious inasmuch as it not only destroys the child’s life, but also exposes him or her to sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS,” says Kouyate.

Statistics provided by the National Anti-AIDS Programme show that Guinea, with a population of about seven million, had 9,000 HIV-positive individuals in the last half of 2001, but, according to a statistician, who requested anonymity, “this figure significantly underestimates the actual number of cases”.

The average annual income in Guinea is 490 U.S. dollars per head.

Aissatou Diallo, an occasional seamstress, says she has resorted to prostitution because she has no other choice. “No one is helping me. I’m obliged to do this work in order to meet my needs and those of my family. My father is dead and my mother is ill,” says the 13-year-old sex worker.

Even though the situation is alarming, the government seems to have other priorities. “The tragedy is that figures on this phenomenon are often poorly kept or not kept at all, as is the case with pedophilia or child prostitution. They are tolerated but illegal in Guinea,” says Barry.

Guinean lawyer, Macire Sylla says “Pedophilia is a crime. Therefore, it should be punished. And to effectively wipe it out, all these child marriages which are carried out based on ‘tradition’ should be halted too”.

Many Liberian and Sierra Leonean girls, often war orphans with few other prospects, are also becoming sex workers. “In their fervour”, a Guinean official claims “they are leading our compatriots astray”.

But Abouacar Diallo, a Guinean journalist, says “it’s unfair to blame” the growing cases of prostitution in Guinea “on other people”.

“Prostitution and pedophilia existed in Guinea well before the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone,” he says.

Guinea was home to about 500,000 refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone by early last year, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Nov 8 2001 (IPS)

Relative calm is returning to Guinea where opposition supporters, who tried to enter Kankan, a city some 600 kilometres east of the capital, Conakry, were beaten up by the army last week.

The opposition supporters were travelling to Kankan to protest the Nov 11 referendum on whether President Lansana Conte should stand for a third term of office.

Abdourahmane Coumbassa, of the Guinean People’s Union, said the clashes occurred between opposition militants and soldiers loyal to the ruling party.

Coumbassa said 62 opposition militants, who had been arrested during the fracas, have been freed, including Ousmane Kaba, a former minister and a top opposition leader. H “The soldiers were armed to the teeth and equipped with clubs and whips, and they charged the opposition supporters when they tried to enter the city. The opposition supporters resisted and there was a skirmish,” Lansana Komara, an opposition leader, told IPS.

“Several dozen people were injured, some of who were admitted to Kankan hospital and remain hospitalised,” he said.

Komara said, “The convoy was made up of leaders from the main opposition parties, including Ba Mamadou and Siradiou Diallo, Sidya Toure, Fatou Bangoura and Charles Pascal Tolno.”

He denied allegations by the soldiers that the violence was sparked by a clash between rival political groups.

A military source told IPS, “The army intervened only after a clash between opposition and ruling party militants”. According to the source, “After having spent the night in the town of Dinguiraye, the opposition convoy headed toward Kankan. There, ruling party militants were waiting for them. There was a fight and that’s why the army intervened.”

Rejecting army’s version of the story, Komara said “the leaders of the convoy were barred from entering the city by the soldiers, some of whom were armed with machine guns”.

Commenting on the incident, the Minister of Justice, Abou Camara, said, “What happened at Kankan is unfortunate. The convoy was also illegal. That was why the law enforcement agencies intervened to prevent those people from violating the law. You cannot live in a country and refuse to respect its laws.”

In Conakry, Moussa Solano, the Minister for Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, said he “was not aware of the confrontation in Kankan”.

The Guinean oppositions have called for a boycott of the Nov 11 referendum, which — the ruling party hopes — will allow President Conte to run for another term.

The government has warned that it will brook “no violation of the law which gives all citizens the right to vote”.

The Movement for a Change of Power and Democracy Against the Referendum (MORAD), a coalition of opposition groups, is organising demonstrations to “protest Conte’s decision to crown himself life president”. Conte was elected in 1993, and re- elected in 1998″ for a two five-year terms as provided by the constitution.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose country is helping Guinea quell the rebellion in the south, urged Guinean authorities, in a message, to “hold free and fair elections to guarantee the stability in Guinea”.

“If the Guinean authorities are not able to guarantee those standards, we will be forced to reduce our aid to Guinea,” warned the message.

The U.S. warning was followed by a declaration from the ambassadors of France, the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan to the Minister of Territorial Administration. Speaking for the Group of Eight (G-8), the ambassadors said they were “very concerned about the situation in Guinea”.

G-8 comprises the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Russia, Italy and Britain.

The European Union also urged the Guinean government to uphold the country’s constitution.

Unrelenting, President Conte criticised “foreign interference in the Guinean internal affairs”. He told teachers, who came to pay their loyalty to him, that “the referendum will go ahead” on Nov 11.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Oct 26 2001 (IPS)

Opposition parties in Guinea have decided to boycott the Nov 11 referendum, called to determine whether Lansana Conte should be granted a third chance to run for the presidency.

The opposition coalition, Movement for Change of Power and Democracy Against the Referendum (MORAD), has made it clear that it also intends to block the Dec 27 legislative elections.

MORAD’s spokesperson, Ba Mamadou, noted Wednesday at a Conakry press conference: “As of this week, we’ll be organising demonstrations…meetings in Conakry and the rest of the country, marches, and other actions to prevent the ruling powers from imposing their will on the Guinean people”.

“We’re ready and we plan to act on an ad hoc basis. We want to let the government know that what they’re planning with this referendum and the legislative elections is completely illegal,” Mamadou emphasised.

“To do that, we’ve developed an action plan that goes through Nov 11, the date on which the referendum is scheduled. A plan to revise the constitution cannot be submitted to a vote by the people unless it first goes through the National Assembly,” he added.

Mamadou said, “General Conte wants to create a no-party regime in Guinea like in Uganda, where the president can do whatever he likes. But we will not accept that here.”

MORAD plans to organise a series of meetings in Conakry soon. “Even if the authorities say the meeting is not authorised, we’re going to hold it anyway because this time we cannot retreat. Our credibility in the eyes of the Guinean and international public is at stake,” said Mamadou.

Mamadi Diane of the Guinean People’s Union (RPG) – the party of opposition leader Alpha Conde – told IPS at the end of the press conference that “the opposition mobilisation we’re witnessing is reassuring. It allows us to express ourselves and to let the Conte regime know they can’t walk all over us.”

Reacting to a letter from the Ministry of Justice that intends to exclude Conde from the Dec 27 legislative elections, Diane said, “Conde was never stripped of his parliamentary immunity”, when he was jailed in 1998.

Former prime minister and leader of the opposition Union of Republican Forces (UFR), Sidya Toure, said “it is impossible to hold (legislative elections) under the present conditions, after the massive displacement of people during recent rebel attacks. The voter lists need to be revised”.

The opposition said they want to “prevent Guinea from instituting life president” in the West African country.

If Conte is given free hand, Mohamed Berete, of the department of law at the University of Conakry, said “the proposed constitutional reform will offer no protection against one-man rule”.

El Hadj Biro Diallo, the Speaker of the National Assembly, said “the Nov 11 referendum amounts to an institutional coup d’etat”.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice said on Wednesday that “President Conte is our leader. We should do what he says. For our part, we will do everything we can to make sure the law of Guinea is respected”.

Aboubacar Sompare, secretary-general of the ruling Party of Unity and Progress (PUP), said “President Conte is free to submit a referendum to the public. The law does not say that he must first get it passed by the National Assembly.”

Guinea, which shares its borders with Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Cote D’Ivoire, has seen its share of political violence.

In Sep 1993, some 20 activists from rival political parties were killed during clashes.

When opposition leader Conde was arrested in Dec 1998, several militants from his party, the RPG, died in confrontations with the police.

Another opposition leader, Charles Pascal Tolno, offered a glimmer of hope when he observed that “the army is siding with the republicans”, referring to the opposition political parties.

Sekou Toure, ruled Guinea for 26 years as a dictator until Conte took over in a coup d’etat on Apr 3, 1984.

After nine years of military dictatorship, Conte was first elected in 1993 and then re-elected in 1998 after a controversial vote where Conde, the opposition legislator, was arrested and imprisoned for almost two years.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Oct 19 2001 (IPS)

Yellow fever has resurfaced in Guinea this year.

Twenty-five cases were reported recently, 18 in Conakry, the capital, alone. Four people have already succumbed to the disease, medical officials say.

In the central Mamou region, 248 people died of yellow fever during the last four months of 2000.

From Sep 2000 to Oct 2001, 869 cases of the disease were reported in Guinea, resulting in 252 deaths.

For the moment, spread of the disease appears to have been checked, although the situation is tenuous and needs to be carefully monitored, says a physician familiar with the epidemic.

Two afflicted individuals from Kindia, 135 kilometres east of Conakry, were brought to the capital for treatment. Special rooms have been equipped at the Donka University Hospital Centre (CHU) in Conakry where all cases have been confined.

Hospital cleaners have been ordered to weed and disinfect the areas near the special rooms to limit the risk of contagion. The special Donka CHU rooms are in the infectious disease ward, where all patients receive free care.

“For yellow fever, it’s important to monitor the cleanliness of the environment. It’s important to make the area inhospitable for mosquitoes, and thus keep puddles and weeds to a minimum,” says Dr. Mohamed Conte, who works in Conakry.

Dr. Prosper Haba, the chief of emergency and epidemiological services for the Ministry of Health, says while the epidemic is under control, the country is not yet out of the woods. “As you see, we only have two confined patients. The remaining 19 people were able to return to their towns and villages after receiving treatment here,” he says.

“Recently we had a fourth death, a woman who had several infections and a very complicated case, according to a medical report. “Since Guinea is situated in a very humid tropical area, we need to take very strict precautions,” the physician explains.

According to Dr. Haba, “The mosquito responsible for transmitting the disease, whose Latin name is Aedes Egypti, does not have the same characteristics as the anopheles mosquito which causes malaria. The Aedes Egypti bites more during the day than by night, and it usually hides in grasses or damp foliage”.

“Given there is no specific cure for yellow fever, we’re urging people to keep their living environment clean. Use of mosquito netting is also recommended,” he says.

Dr. Haba says, “We’ve been in contact with donor nations to ask for funds for a vaccination campaign. We’re eager to get started with this since vaccinations provide ten-year immunity to the disease”.

According to some sources at the Ministry of Health, the programme might cover regions such as Kindia, Conakry, and Nzerekore. Nzerekore borders Cote D’Ivoire, where they’ve declared an epidemic. A vaccination campaign could reach more than a million people.

Recently, 20 people died of yellow fever in Cote d’Ivoire, prompting the authorities there to take emergency measures, including vaccination, to protect the public.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched an anti-yellow fever fund-raising campaign for Cote D’Ivoire to raise 2.9 million U.S. dollars. Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea share a common border.

A WHO rapid evaluation team is presently in the Ivorian capital and is “devoting itself to setting up containment plan” against the disease.

“A mass vaccination plan for some three million doses of the vaccine is being planned in Abidjan. The WHO is trying its best to immediately locate supplies of anti-malarial vaccines (against yellow fever) which can be quickly transported to Cote D’Ivoire,” according to a statement from the agency.

In Guinea, Dr. Haba said, “Doctors Without Borders helped us to launch an effective campaign as the one in Mamou last year which allowed us to eliminate the disease”.

Mamou is a prefecture in central Guinea. Eight million people live in Guinea, a country in West Africa. It borders Cote d’Ivoire on the south, Sierra Leone and Liberia on the southeast, Senegal in the north, and Mali on the east.

“If you were in Mamou last year, you would understand how everyone has a stake in eradicating yellow fever. It was simply horrible seeing so many people vomiting, screaming in pain, trembling and losing control of all their faculties, with nothing but sure death to look forward to,” explains Malick Diallo, a native of the region.

“But when people began making sure that their environment was clean, with the help of the authorities and Doctors Without Borders, the situation quickly changed,” he says.

According to Dr. Haba, “When people are treated very early in the course of the disease, quinine treatment against yellow fever is often quite effective. That’s why we always ask people to immediately report all suspected cases to their nearest health clinic”.

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By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Jun 19 2001 (IPS)

Followers of President Lansana Conte have proposed constitutional amendments to allow their leader to run for a third term in 2003, drawing fire from the opposition.

Elected officials in Upper Guinea, most of whom belong to the ruling Unity and Progress Party (PUP), met last week at Kankan, some 600 kilometers from the capital, and issued a statement asking the president to look into amending the 1990 Constitution, which limits the head of state to two terms in office.

Opposition groups, assembled under the Coordination of the Democratic Opposition (CODEM), have vowed to fight the proposal.

“We’re against modifying the Constitution and very soon we’ll publicise this fact”, said CODEM spokesperson and former presidential contender Ba Mamadou.

Conte has kept his intentions to himself. Other regional leaders have abandoned similar attempts to prolong their tenure.

Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare has proclaimed his opposition to “presidency for life.” In Zambia, street demonstrations forced Frederic Chiluba to renounce an unconstitutional third term in office. And Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi recently abandoned a similar plan.

Article 24 of Guinea’s Constitution states that “the president of the Republic of Guinea shall be elected for a five-year mandate, which may only be renewed once”. Article 26 specifies that “only individuals between the ages of 40 and 65 may run for president”.

Conte was elected in 1993 and reelected in 1998. Born in 1935, he will be 68 in 2003, when the next presidential elections are scheduled to take place.

The Upper Guinea officials have proposed a referendum in hopes of circumventing the Constitutional provisions. In addition to removing term limits and doing away with the age restriction, they said they wanted the presidential term extended to seven years, from the current five.

“The people of Guinea must realize that the future of our nation and its children is inextricably linked to the continuance of General Lansana Conte. At the moment, this is an unassailable fact,” said Colonel Ibrahima Sory Diallo, the governor of Kankan.

“With war all around us and the instability plaguing the continent, our sub-region is under a serious threat,” added Kaba Conde, Kankan’s mayor and a member of the PUP. “I’m nursing the hope that our hardworking people will agree that we need to extend the presidential term of office.”

Mamadou, who ran in the 1998 presidential elections, assailed the proposed referendum. At 66, he is too old to run again. CODEM, the leading opposition coalition, is dominated by the Union Guinean People (RPG) and the Union for Progress and Renewal (UPR).

“If they can organize a referendum, that means they also could have organized the legislative elections, contrary to what the ruling party would have us believe for the past two years”, Mamadou said.

Legislative elections had been scheduled for Jun. 2000 but were postponed indefinitely due to a lack of funding, according to official accounts. The 1995 parliament, which was supposed to leave office in 2000, remains in place pending new polls.

“People have understood the impossibility of organizing legislative elections with rebel incursions at our borders, so why wouldn’t they understand how necessary it is to let President Conte to run for a third term? The context demands it if we’re to maintain peace”, asserted Deputy Sekou Mouke Yansane, the PUP’s international relations director.

Since September 2000, Guinea has been the target of armed attacks launched, according to the Conakry government, by Sierra Leone’s rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) with support from Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Alpha Conde, the RPG leader freed from prison in May, has been silent on the subject because his conviction on charges of capital crimes against the government stripped him of his civil rights. Conde was arrested in 1998 immediately after the elections, which were tainted by fraud allegations against Conte’s government. He was imprisoned for two years without trial until the Supreme Court sentenced him to five years after controversial legal proceedings late last year.

One lawyer, who requested anonymity, said modifying the constitution would cause “a serious blow to democracy. It is indefensible that someone should try, for personal reasons and no matter what the cost, to remain in power by circumventing the law”.

Gen. Conte came to power in a 1984 coup d’etat and survived two armed attempts to depose him – in 1985 and 1996. He was almost killed during the latter army mutiny.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 29 2001 (IPS)

Government officials here are hailing recent foreign investments in the cement industry and the mining sector as proof that the war in southern Guinea is having little effect on the country’s attractiveness to investors but opposition politicians and others paint a different picture.

The latest big investment, which is from Germany, is in a new cement factory in Sougueta, Kindia prefecture, approximately 150 kilometres from the capital, Conakry. Kindia has been the scene of rebel attacks,

Construction of the factory, which will cost 10 million dollars, began May 15. Completion is expected in 26 to 28 months and government officials say total investment in the plant could reach 16-million dollars.

According to Mocire Sylla, the director general of the Centre to Promote and Develop Mining (CPDM), the cement factory will have an annual capacity of 523,000 metric tons. The plant will provide construction jobs for 260 people and create 1,000 permanent workers.

“The other big project in progress is construction of a factory to produce aluminium, of which bauxite ore is the major ingredient. After Australia, Guinea is the world’s largest producer of bauxite, and produces 17 million tons annually”, stated Oumar Babara Toure, the executive secretary of the Guinean Mining Federation.

This west African country, which shares long borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone, is involved in a regional conflict that also involves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leone rebel movement supported by Liberian President Charles Taylor.

Control over the region’s mineral resources, especially diamonds is fuelling the conflict. Sierra Leone is a big diamond producer. According to a UN report, Taylor profits from the war in Sierra Leone by indulging in illegal diamond trafficking. Taylor’s emissaries transact nearly 50 million dollars in business each year with the RUF, who get guns in return.

Recently, a local satirical weekly, “The Lynx”, accused Guinea’s military of profiting also from the war in the south by themselves fraudulently mining diamonds. According to officials figures, 43 mining licenses were issued between 1998 and 2000 by the Ministry of Mines.

Guinean dissidents include the mysterious Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (RFDG) which claims credit for all attack operations on Guinean territory, but which analysts believe are really carried out by members of the RUF and mercenaries.

Among the RFDG, the names of commandants Nfamara Oular and Gbago Zoumanigui have been cited, the latter being a former Guinean Minister of Sports.. Both deserted after the February 2 and 3, 1996 mutiny which toppled the regime of President Lansana Conte.

When Taylor was a rebel leader on his way to power the Guinea government deployed troops to fight against his Scorpions’– an act which Taylor has neither forgotten or forgiven.

Now, Monrovia and Conakry mutually accuse each other of being a base camp for dissidents who are seeking to destabilize each other’s regimes.

Despite the conflicts, government sources, including Aboucar Sompare, the secretary general of the Party for Unity and Progress (PUP assert that Guinea won’t have problems attracting investors because of its business environment. It is also one of the few countries in west Africa that has not been plagued by serious problems in the last few years.

But according to Professor Alpha Sow of the Union of Democratic Forces (UFD), investors are quite reticent about countries at war, Guinea included. Guinea must find a way to restore total peace to the country if their plans are to be revived and realised.

Alpha Sow was the head of opposition leader Alpha Conde’s presidential campaign in 1998.

One project that could be affected by the conflict is the ambitious Sangaredi alumina and energy project, in the north of the country which the Mining Federation’s Toure said should attract as much as 2.5 billion dollars a year for several years

The project is designed to produce 240,000 tons of aluminium annually as well as “construction of a 750-megawatt hydroelectric dam and extension of the Friguia alumina factory, which will bring annual production to a million tons per year”, he added.

Toure conceded, however, that “in the short term, the Sangaredi factory won’t be built for at least another four or five years. Everything will depend on efforts by foreign investors . . . who are the ones who have promised to finalise the project”.

The foreign shareholders in the project include the Marubeni and Mitsubishi corporations of Japan (45 percent), Enron, a United States energy firm (20 percent), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank.The Guinean government is a 15 percent stakeholder.

The opposition insist that investor attitude will be determined ,in large part, by the state of the conflict and that projects such as the aluminium factory “will never see the light of day unless the country achieves total peace. Otherwise, investors will continue to be hesitant”.

In the diamond industry, where the great majority of mines are in Guinea’s south, particularly in Kerouane, Macenta, Kissidougou, mine officials continue to be guardedly optimistic, in spite of rebel incursions and reprisals by Guinean soldiers at the borders.

The optimism is partly because Guinean army has reportedly gained ground and is doing a better job of protecting the safety and security of its people after the international community set up an arms and diamond embargo against Monrovia’s leaders.

According to Ibrahima Cherif Bah, the governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Guinea, “more than 335,000 carats-worth of diamonds were traded during the year 2000, nearly 43.7 million dollars-worth, 1.3 million of which were collected as taxes by the Guinean treasury”.

Officially, permits to mine diamonds along 200 to 250 square kilometre expanses can be awarded upon application for maximum of two years to companies that can prove that they have the necessary margin of financial stability.

According to the Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Mahawa Bangoura, more than 1,600 people have died since the conflict began. The Guinean side of the war is financed essentially by the government and its western allies, such as the United States and Great Britain.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Apr 26 2001 (IPS)

Guinean officials have reaffirmed their opposition to the deployment of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) troops on their soil as long as the mandate for the troops is not clearly defined.

At the end of last year, ECOWAS decided to deploy 1,600 of its troops, known as ECOMOG, to the borders between Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia as an interposing and peacekeeping force. But Guinea is now rejecting the concept of these troops as an interposing force, instead insisting they be called “an intervention force, to keep the Liberian aggressors away”.

The joint visit last week by French Minister of Co-operation, Charles Josselin, and British Secretary for International Development, Clare Short, had little influence on Conakry’s position.

Hadja Mahawa Bangoura, the Assistant Minister to the Guinean President in Charge of Foreign Affairs, met last Thursday with foreign diplomats in Conakry and asked that “their respective countries support Guinea in its efforts to restore peace to the subregion”.

“The return of peace will necessarily depend on the neutralisation of Charles Taylor, the present head of Liberia, and his band of rebels, who are sowing death and destruction all through Guinea’s south, and all over the Mano River Union countries.

The Guinean minister also requested that the “arms embargo with Liberia voted in by the United Nations Security Council be observed, and that it be expanded to all commerce in wood and rubber, which are Liberia’s main exports”.

According to western sources, trade in teak alone fetches Liberia about 60 million dollars per year through the operations of a subsidiary of the French group Bollore, which operates there.

Guinea has asked the international community to help it manage the humanitarian crisis posed by the refugees stuck on a strip of Guinean land squeezed between Liberia and Sierra Leone “before it’s too late”.

However, Guinean president Lansana Conte told the visiting French and British ministers that “the refugee issue is a false problem. These are RUF (Revolutionary United Front) rebels supported by Taylor, who are attacking Guinea”, he maintained.

Josselin said that his brief stay in the war-ravaged town of Gueckedou was instructive. “First of all, I was able to see the destruction myself. I was especially impressed by the survivors, who are extremely alive and energetic …. However, it is necessary that the refugee question be considered in a broader framework than simply that of restoring peace,” he declared.

Approximately two weeks ago, the Guinean government gave the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) an ultimatum to clear the narrow Gueckedou strip, commonly known as the Parrot’s Beak. Today, only about half of the former 140,000 refugees previously living there remain.

The UNHCR office in Gueckedou says that “sixty thousand refugees are presently stuck on the Parrot’s Beak”. This is the result of having relocated 20,000 refugees from the Kapkama refugee camp in Kissidougou, 26,000 from the Kountia camp, and 24,000 from Boreyah.

The remaining refugees who do not remain on Parrot’s Beak have undertaken the perilous task of returning to Sierra Leone, where refugees are often ensnared in traps set in RUF-controlled zones.

The liberation of the town of Gueckedou was no easy feat. Gueckedou was under siege during several weeks after the national army split with those who presented themselves as members of ULIMO (United Liberian Liberation Movement) to the broadcast and print press when they toured this ravaged corner.

Today, the town is free, but only after intense bombing raids by the Guinean air force. Even the town’s 116-bed, 86-employee hospital did not escape fire. Everything was destroyed.

Several days ago, the military prefect of Gueckedou appealed to the authorities to address the issue of lack of water and electricity in the town. However, he reassured residents that security was “guaranteed for 50 kilometres all along the border” and asked people to return to the centre of the city.

During the French and British ministers’ visit, the people of the town were just beginning to emerge from their shell-shock. Some market stalls had even begun appearing.

The Liberian and Guinean presidents were not able to meet during the last ECOWAS summit in Abuja, Nigeria, a fact that does not bode well for the rapid restoration of peace in the area.

Excerpt:

By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Feb 18 2001 (IPS)

Human rights activists here are worried that the government’s response to a wave of criminal activity in the country will lead to rights abuses across the state.

Guinean officials earlier this month ended the 17-year moratorium on the death penalty. The authorities ordered four people to be executed before a firing squad at Kindia Central Prison, located about 150 kilometres from the capital, Conakry.

The death penalty was suspended in Guinea in 1984 after a military coup d’etat unseated President Sekou Toure. Toure used the firing squad to get rid of many of his political opponents. Considered a dictator, Toure came to be identified with the infamous Camp Boiro, a sinister prison where hundreds of his opponents perished.

In 1971, following an attack by the Portuguese on Nov. 22, 1970, several of the Toure administration officials were hung on a Conakry bridge. The public executions all took place after hastily administered “people’s” trials.

In 1975, Sekou Toure had several merchants accused of “plotting” against his regime executed.

The debate on reinstating the death penalty began last week after the execution of four of five defendants sentenced to death in 1995 by the Appeals Court of Conakry. The fifth had died earlier in prison.

Guinea’s Minister of Justice, Attorney General Abou Camara, defended the decision to execute the men by denouncing corruption, crime, and the laxity which presently characterises the Guinean judicial system.

Because of Guinea’s many border conflicts, there are now so many unregistered war weapons among the general public that elaborate armed attacks are not uncommon.

“We’ve let this go on for far too long. These evildoers murder honest citizens and all they do is go to prison. What’s worse is that they get out in short order and then go and thumb their noses at the victims’ families,” Camara said, the day before the Feb. 5 executions.

“The law might as well not even exist for them. The most basic human civilities are being trampled upon. Well, all that’s now in the past. From now on, it’s lex talionis: an eye for an eye! All judicial decisions are going to be carried out to the letter of the law,” Camara added.

But many, including attorney Christian Sow, president of the bar association and member of the Guinean League for Human Rights (OGDH), do not share Camara’s point of view.

“To sentence someone to death, there’s a rigorous process you have to go through. During the 1995 ‘gang’ trials when the people executed today were sentenced, most of the 70 defendants said they had been tortured,” Sow stated.

According to some reports, the great majority of defendants who appeared in court during the famous trial, which was televised live, had not been caught in the act. Almost all were arrested after being anonymously denounced, or after their own companions had confessed.

Like Sow, attorney Sydram Camara, who was the court-appointed lawyer for some of the ‘gang trial’ defendants, says he has reservations about the application of the death penalty in Guinea.

“I am absolutely against the death penalty. Criminologists around the world agree that as a deterrent, it is useless as a crime-prevention tool,” he told a Guinean newspaper.

He added: “The 1995 death sentences do nothing to improve the country’s image, especially when you bear in mind that internationally, Guinea is not seen in a very good light, especially where human rights are concerned. Executing people will appear as just another nasty aspect of the country.”

Sow believes that “applying the death penalty will do nothing to solve our crime problem. Human life is sacred, and we need to find other solutions”.

Karim Kane, secretary general of the Action Support Committee of President Lansana Conte (Cosalac) remains dubious about this theory, saying merely “serious ills call for serious remedies”.

Men and women on the street have expressed a mixture of relief and doubt.

“If we stay the course, the gangsters, crooks and other lawbreakers are going to find themselves out of work. If the people executed today had been executed six years ago just after they were sentenced, crime wouldn’t have gotten as out of hand as it has these past few years,” said Ramatoulaye Sylla, an executive secretary.

Oumar Camara, a computer scientist, is less certain. “I’m not against the fact that they were executed. Only, why now? They were in prison for six years and had plenty of time to think about what they had done. They should’ve been given another chance, and we should be tougher with the ones who are out killing now.”

The present Guinean penal code does include a capital punishment provision. Article 14 states that “those sentenced to death will be shot. If a woman sentenced to death is known to be pregnant, she may give birth and her sentence may be postponed for up to one year if the child lives that long”.

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