Rights group slams "caricature of democracy"

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has heavily criticised Guinea, describing the West African country as a "caricature of democracy," where basic freedoms are enshrined in law, but are not respected by the government of President Lansana Conte. The Paris-based human rights organisation published its report earlier this week shortly after the government banned two opposition leaders from leaving the country to travel to Senegal. The FIDH report, entitled "Guinea: a virtual democracy with an uncertain future," pointed out that opposition parties and independent newspapers were allowed to exist and elections were held regularly. But it slammed the government for repeatedly over-riding the law to detain and harass real or suspected opponents of the regime and for rigging elections in favour of Conte, a former army colonel, who came to power 20 years ago in a military coup. "Although the regime of President Lansana Conte has not reduced all the areas of freedom available to citizens to zero, it has transformed the social and political life of Guinea into a caricature of democracy in which the rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution are violated," the FIDH said. The report was prepared on the basis of investigative missions to Guinea in November 2003 and February this year. It was published two days after the government's refusal to allow former prime minister Sidya Toure and Ba Mamadou, the chairman of the Republican Front for Democratic Change (FRAD) alliance of opposition parties, to board a plane to fly to Senegal on 10 April. Government officials invited by IRIN to comment on the FIDH report declined to do so, but the locally based Guinean Organisation of the Defence of Human Rights (OGDH) backed up its findings. "The practice and procedures used by the state to arbitrarily arrest and detain people are against the penal code and defy all regional and universal codes that protect human rights," OGDH chairman Thiernor Maadjou Sow told a press conference in Conakry on Wednesday. Sow said prison conditions were deplorable, particular in the eastern city of Kankan. Three months incarceration in the jail there was equivalent to a death sentence, he added. The FIDH drew attention to the ill health of President Conte, who suffers from heart problems and diabetes and is now barely able to walk, and his lack of respect for the rule of law. It warned that Conte's his death in office would lead to "a high risk period of transition" in Guinea which could easily take the form of "a military coup followed by possible violence." The FIDH was particularly critical of the presidential election of 21 December which gave 70-year-old Conte a further seven years in power. It noted that the poll was boycotted by the mainstream opposition parties, leaving Conte facing only one minor challenger, that the machinery of government had been placed at the service of Conte's re-election campaign and that local and international observers were banned from monitoring the poll. The FIDH cast serious doubt on the official results, which showed that Conte had won with 95.63 percent of the vote on an 82.76 percent turnout. The FIDH estimated that actual turnout was less than 15 percent and cited several instances of blatant vote rigging. It noted, for example, that only 990 Guinean residents in Senegal had registered to vote at the Guinean embassy in Dakar, which subsequently claimed that 61,000 had cast a ballot there. The FIDH also detailed repeated instances of arbitrary arrest and detention without trial of suspected opponents of the regime. The report cited a wave of arrests of members of the armed forces throughout the country in November 2003 on suspicion that they were planning a coup. It noted that although some were subsequently released, six members of the armed forces and 10 civilians were still being held without charge at the PM3 military camp in the capital Conakry four months later. Sources close to the detainees told IRIN on Tuesday that several were still imprisoned there. The FIDH also cited the arrest of the leaders of Guinea's two teachers' trade unions in November 2003 after they called a strike to demand the implementation of an existing pay agreement and the arrest of student leaders at Conakry university, following a student strike in February this year to demand higher student allowances. "The absolute pre-emininence of the executive means that the Guinean system (of government) has reached a situation where the police have no respect for the judiciary and for the rules of good administration of justice," the FIDH said. The report noted that in the interior, the prefects who head the government administration in each district generally consider trade union leaders to be political opponents of the government and subject them to harassment. This had dissuaded many workers from joining trade unions, even though the unions themselves were legal organisations, it added. It blamed misrule by Conte's regime for Guinea's increasing poverty and concluded that there was little impetus for reform within the government, despite the appointment of a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Francois Fall, a respected diplomat, in February. "The regime of President Lansana Conte does not seem inclined to open up in a way that is necessary to overcome a real impasse in political life and create a rule of law, worthy of this name," the report concluded. Ba Mamadou, one of the two opposition politicians banned from leaving the country last week, told reporters on Wednesday that the government now had a two-page black list of opposition activists, businessmen and journalists who were to be prevented from going abroad. He warned that the situation in Guinea was deteriorating and hinted that ordinary citizens might soon revolt against the government. "People do not realise that things are getting far worse and I am convinced that sooner rather than later they will take the bull by the horns," the chairman of the FRAD opposition alliance said.