Camp Boiro International Memorial
(CBIM)

Introduction

I. Background: A totalitarian legacy

Human rights violations have plagued the Republic of Guinea since its birth, nearly half a century ago. This history highlights the lack of a democratic tradition in the post-colonial elite. However, the culprit lays chiefly on Sekou Touré, the country's first president. Wielding a charismatic leadership, he imposed an intolerant ideology and a totalitarian rule on Guinea.
His ruling party, the Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG), sought to create “the new Guinean”. It only succeeded in destroying the education system and in erasing or falsifying history. The PDG hegemony had no tolerance for political dissent. Individual freedom and civil liberties were crushed. Total conformity replaced alternatives ideas and views. Personality cult dawned upon Guinea as Sekou Toure was declared the infallible Responsable Suprême of the Révolution. Adulation for the Leader became a way of life under the threat of an omnipresent police-state, that minutely paced daily life.
To strengthen his power, Sekou Toure invented The Permanent Plot. This conspiracy scheme translated into cyclical political purges. Under his direct control, the army, the security forces and the party militia enforced a reign of terror. Arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, fake trials, and executions became a routine. Military barracks turned into detention centers and killing grounds. Thousands of political prisoners disappeared there. The country itself became a global prison. Everyone was a potential target of the 'revolutionary' secret police, including children and the elderly. The terror peaked in 1976. Then, in a series of provocative and self-destructive speeches, Sekou Touré incited to ethnic warfare and genocide against the main ethnic group: the FulBe.
Located in the center of Conakry, the Camp Boiro National Guard Barracks was the epicenter of the Guinean Gulag. It is estimated that more than 50,000 political prisoners disappeared there. The purges targeted the country's brightest minds but also the entrepreneurs, the unions leaders, women … .
Sékou Touré died abruptly on March 26, 1984. He left a bloody trail, an impoverished country, and a divided people. A week later, a bloodless coup overthrew his totalitarian régime.

II. The current situation

1. Broken Promises

On April 3, 1984, military officers headed by Colonel Lansana Conté took staged a coup d'Etat. The new rulers freed political prisoners and closed down Camp Boiro. They promised a thorough and independent account of the dictatorship's human rights record. They appointed a national commission, which they mandated to gather, compile and publish the evidence in a “Livre Blanc”. The military regime allowed survivors to testify and air their grievances on state radio. However, the commission never sat in session. It was soon disbanded, and the promised publication never materialized. Also, a radio talk show about torture and executions at Camp Boiro, was abruptly cancelled.
On the plus side, survivors and researchers have published dozens of books and scores of newspapers articles about Camp Boiro. To date, none of these accounts has prompted officials to action. And the Guinean judicial system is yet to investigate, let alone prosecute, the Camp Boiro human rights crimes. Clearly, unless some pressure is brought to bear, the regime of General Lansana Conté will not admit the state's past and current human rights abuses.

2. Destroyed Evidence and Fading Memory

At its peak, Camp Boiro was a contemporary of the Khmer Rouge and a precursor of the Rwandan genocides. However, the main torture and executions camp itself has disappeared. The site of the prison complex has become a domestic garbage dump. No sign whatsoever that thousands of men, women, children and elderly people, were arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured, and/or executed here. The regime Lansana Conté has ignored, and perhaps quietly encouraged, the gradual destruction of a historical crime scene, that contained incriminating and prosecutorial evidence.
Worse, twenty-one years later, Guinea does not have a memorial, a monument, or a public space dedicated to the victims. The country is slowing forgetting its tragedy. Its painful past is steadily fading away and slipping into oblivion.

3. Rehabilitation and Impunity

Beginning in 1998, in a controversial move, General Lansana Conté decided to rehabilitate Sekou Touré: the former dictator and all-time chief-violator of human rights. In hindsight, it appears he was sending a clear signal of return to the past, and his own intentions to crack down on human rights. He unofficially decided to call the new presidential palace by the name of Sekoutoureya. Subsequently, the National Assembly voted a law clearing president Sekou Toure from wrongdoing during his tenure. The legislation granted him posthumous immunity from investigation. And his estate was restituted to his family. His widow was reinstated as Former First Lady, along with a generous annual pension and other privileges and perks. Essentially, those measures have imposed unaccountability and impunity for former officials. Sekou Touré's official rehabilitation has emboldened his political heirs and the perpetrators of the Camp Boiro human rights crimes. They now claim publicly their innocence.
Meanwhile, the authorities refuse to recognize the martyrdom of the victims. Today, handicapped and deprived of assistance, survivors of torture are abandoned to themselves.

4. Continued Violations and Heightened Crisis

Sekou Toure's totalitarian régime and the Camp Boiro mentality are not bygones. On the contrary, the most prominent officials of the current regime, were member of the Central Committee of the PDG. They sat in the dictatorship's paramount ruling body and were key decision-makers. The Central Committee appointed the members of the feared Revolutionary Tribunal, which ordered the arrests and organized the extra-judicial trials and executions. Today, prominent state and government officials, such as the president of the National Assembly, Aboubacar Somparé, publicly assert their loyalty to Sekou Toure. Therefore, it is no surprise that the violent methods of the tyranny have resumed. Arbitrary arrests, torture, and mysterious disappearances are recurrent. Abuse of ordinary citizens, cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees are routine frequently. Soldiers, police, and paramilitary extort money, rape women, and steal private property in total disregard for the law. At the same time, dire poverty and glaring inequities fuel lawlessness, criminality and insecurity.

5. External Factors

Paradoxically, despite its rampant corruption and domestic repression, Guinea is often —erroneouly— designated as an island of stability in a volatile sub-region. Armed rebellions in four neighboring countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d'Ivoire) have displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees into the country. The exodus caused untold human suffering and widespread environmental destruction. This external events have compounded an explosive domestic landscape. Guinea owes its certified status as a failed state to half a century (1957-2006) of inept leadership under Sékou Touré and Lansana Conté. In short, Guinea is a time bomb ticking, and a looming human rights crisis.
The Camp Boiro International Memorial (CBIM) was founded to promote of human rights in Guinea. It is an advocates organization fighting for the triumph of the rule of law and democracy in the country. It calls for remembering and investigating the horrifying legacy of the two guinean regimes. It is the best way to prevent the recurrence of the tragedy.

II. The Mission of CBIM:

The Camp Boiro International Memorial mission is:

III. Organizational profile
The Camp Boiro International Memorial is a volunteer, non-profit, non-partisan organization. It publishes information about human rights violations, political repression, torture, extra-judicial trials and secret executions of political prisoners in the Boiro Concentration Camp and its extensions throughout the Republic of Guinea, from 1961 to 1984.

IV. Why the Camp Boiro International Memorial?

  1. Past is prologue, or as the saying goes, a country ignorant of its negative history is bound to repeat it. That adage applies to Guinea. Yet Guineans deserve to know their history because they cannot truly achieve nation building, social cohesiveness, reconciliation, and economic prosperity until they have dealt with the dark and shameful issues of their country's first decades of independence.
  2. Young Guineans do not know much or anything about Camp Boiro. If this situation persists, and Camp Boiro crimes are hidden from them, they will ignore their past. Thus, they will be ill prepared to challenge and reject dictatorship.
  3. Efforts by private Guinean citizens to record Camp Boiro's atrocities have almost all ended. Meanwhile, the government has rehabilitated the dictator and his régime. Such a move is bound to create a regrettable confusion in the minds of young Guineans. Now is the time for the international community and human rights advocates around the world to add their pressure on the Government of Guinea. The objective is to bring the authorities to acknowledge the past, to stop pretending that no human rights crimes were committed in 1958-1984, and bring to the perpetrators to justice. Otherwise, the thousands of martyrs of the dictatorship would have died in vain. And the legacy of totalitarianism (despotism, unaccountability, and impunity) will continue to prevail over freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

V. Sister organizations

Several human rights organizations exist in Guinea. They operate in difficult circumstances and with little or no access to resources. They are:

  1. L'Association Guinéenne des Victimes du Camp Boiro (AGVCB). This group was created in 1985, following the military coup. It survived a crisis during which it splintered into three smaller groups. It reconstituted itself again as one body, in 2004. It is credited for locating several mass graves. Every year, AGVCB commemorates anniversaries of known massacres of political prisoners: January 25, 1971, October 18, 1971, etc. The Executive director of the Camp Boiro International Memorial is an adviser to the AGVCB.
  2. Diallo Telli Foundation (DTF). A family-based organization, DTF documents the life and martyrdom of Diallo Telli, the first Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity.
  3. Organisation Guinéenne des Droits de l'Homme (OGDH). This human rights watch group is tracks human rights abuses in contemporary Guinea.

VI. Strategy

The Camp Boiro Memorial is a public information-oriented project. It leverages the global Internet to publish a content-rich website. It aims at the efficient dissemination of accurate data and valid information about Camp Boiro. It seeks to effectively challenge and reverse the current official silence about Camp Boiro.
The Camp Boiro International Memorial is a collaborative effort bringing together people with complementary backgrounds, expertise and skills.
The overall approach includes:

VII. Organization

Three groups of volunteers cooperate within CBIM:

  1. The Advisory Board The Advisory Board sets the guidelines and milestones. It advises the Executive Director in all matters pertaining to CBIM. Its members are also involved in various CBIM activities: documentation, writing, education, social functions, etc.
  2. The Executive Director.
  3. The Professional Staff It consists in a team includes scholars and writers. They will bring considerable substance and greater standing to CBIM. Specifically, they will consider the triangular relationship between victims, perpetrators, and executioners. Beyond the rediscovery of Camp Boiro's hideous reality, the writers will propose an analysis of the ideology, methods and tools of the totalitarian regime.

Among many topics, writers will reflect on:

Reviewing the testimonies, speeches, and forced “confessions” of political prisonners, the writers will focus on the « violence workers » and other « atrocity facilitators ». Among many interrogations, they will ponder:

By shedding light on a quarter-century of torture and murder under PDG rule, CBIM's writers will contribute to the Guinean debate about:

VIII. History. The Memorial was created in 1997 as part of the webGuinée portal. Since 1998, it exists as a separate domain name.

IX. Leadership and achievements
Created in 1997, the Camp Boiro International Memorial is registered with Verisign/Network Solutions. It holds the rights to the campboiro.org Domain Name, dedicated to the promotion of human rights in Guinea. The website is a magnet on the World Wide Web. It served millions of bits of information daily. Email from visitors testified to the relevance of the site's content and to is value for the public.

Tierno Siradiou Bah
Executive Director
CBIM

Tierno S. Bah was a linguistics and African languages faculty at the Polytechnical Institute G.A. Nasser (now the University of Conakry) in 1972-1982. A former director of the University Library (1980-1982), Fulbright-Hayes Senior African Scholar (1982-1983), Rockefeller Foundation African Dissertation Fellow (1988), and a Ph.D. (ABD) from The University of Texas at Austin (1988), T. S. Bah has pursued an interdisciplinary career in anthropological-linguistics and digital technology. He is a pioneer-member of the Internet Society, a TCP/IP-Linux-OS X Server network administrator, and the publisher of the webAfriqa© Portal, which includes the webGuinee© and the CBIM websites. A native Pular speaker and reader, he writes in French and in English about sociocultural issues and digital information topics. Prior to founding Afriq Access, Inc. in 1991, he was a manager at MCI World Headquarters, and vice-president of WorldSpace, Inc., Washington, D.C.