The Cutting Edge

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September 28, 2009 was Bloody Monday in the West African state of Guinea. A peaceful festival-style demonstration staged by 50,000 opposition members in a Conakry soccer stadium ended in a bloodbath and an orgy of rape. The opposition was protesting—illegally according to government officials—the rule of the military regime of Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara, and Camara's proposed candidacy in the forthcoming elections. He had originally said he would not stand for president. Camara came to power on December 23, 2008, in a military take-over, one day after President Lansana Conte died. Conte had ruled for 24 years.

At first, Camara was warmly welcomed by the public when he took over power, but relations soon turned sour. He dissolved the constitution and imposed a military junta, and then authorized raids on the homes of Conte's inner circle "to recoup money and property stolen from the state."

According to official government figures, 934 were wounded and 56 were killed in the stadium massacre—four by live bullets and the rest as they stampeded to escape. But human rights groups have said that 157 were killed and over one thousand injured. Camara actually admitted on Radio France that "the violence had been beyond his control. The perpetrators were uncontrollable elements in the military."

Human Rights Watch (HRW), following a ten-day research mission, said their in-depth investigations into the September killings have uncovered new evidence that the massacre and widespread sexual violence were organized and largely committed by the Presidential Guard, known as the "red berets." They also found that armed forces had tried to hide the evidence by seizing bodies from the stadium and morgues and burying them in mass graves. Georgette Gagnon, Africa Director of Human Rights Watch, says that security forces surrounded and blockaded the stadium, then stormed in and fired at protesters until they ran out of bullets. They then attacked with bayonets and knives.

The African Union, the European Union and nearby Senegal denounced the September bloodshed. Guinea's government promised to investigate why troops opened fire on protesters. The UN Security Council has once again called on the Guinean authorities to charge and try the suspected killers. The United States has announced visa bans for regime officials, and the EU have both restricted travel and frozen the assets of those involved in the killings. Thousands of Guineans showed their continuing anger by staying at home and not reporting to work, and dozens began a 5-day hunger strike.

But the evidence is compelling. Shots of unarmed protesters being fired at and women being brutally violated were caught as snapshots on cell-phones, and many statements were recorded by survivors and eyewitnesses.

The level, frequency and brutality of the sexual violence, which lasted several days as women were detained and raped, suggests it was a systematic attempt to terrorize the opposition; and if there is sufficient evidence that it's "systematic," it could be classified as a "crime against humanity". In addition, the opposition is made up of mainly the majority group, the Peuhl, who are Moslems; the military junta is from a minority group.

Sexual attacks on women in African society generally, and Moslem society particularly, are a way of forcing husbands and families to reject them, and so turn the community against itself. Guinea is not the first country in Africa, or in the world, to use rape as a tool of repression, to traumatize and alienate a large section of the population. What was extraordinary in Conakry is that it was carried out so openly and over several days, and then firmly denied. Guinean women have a history of assertiveness in civil society, and of challenging the country's authoritarian regimes since Independence from France—first under Sekou Toure, then Lansana Conte. This tradition may have made them greater targets.

Guinea's mineral wealth has always been subject to foreign plunder. The population of ten million, with one of the greatest poverty indexes in the world, walks over ground where diamonds, gold, iron and half the world's resources of the raw material used to make aluminum are buried. But many in the world are now abruptly reconsidering their connections to a regime whose military has so brazenly committed such a mass crime.

Cutting Edge Africa correspondent Martyn Drakard writes from Uganda and Kenya.