The announcement of the final election results and the calm that now reigns across Guinea are indeed reasons to celebrate. Nevertheless, the new Government of Guinea must now lead the long-overdue process of eliminating impunity and bringing justice to the country. In particular, those responsible for the gross human rights abuses and violence of the 28th of September 2009 must be prosecuted, and the post-electoral violence and abuses of security forces’ power, particularly ethnic-based violence, must also be fully investigated and perpetrators punished.

May this historic democratic transition to civilian rule be the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity for the people of the Republic of Guinea.

Alliance Guinea
allianceguinea@gmail.com

Alliance Guinea Hails the Successful Conclusion of Guinea’s Elections, Calls for Long-term Commitment to both Democracy and Justice is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Despite the SMS ban, GV10 Witness will remain operational and able to receive reports via email to rapport@gv10temoin.org and directly online at www.gv10witness.org.  We will also continue to map media reports and encourage all interested parties to view the many hundreds of messages sent in by citizens during this run-off period.  Our system continues to show that citizens are witnessing, the people are reporting, and humanity is watching from the four corners of the world to the smallest village of Guinea so that a new day may come for Guineans.

Alliance Guinea is not itself an election monitoring organization and it has not been our mission to make generalized statements about the overall legitimacy of the electoral process. Instead, we aim to provide a tool for citizens, election monitors, human rights defenders, and journalists to increase the transparency of the democratic exercise and this transition period.  Since the eve of the runoff elections, the GV10Witness system has received over 5000 SMS messages, including over a thousand throughout the day of the vote. These included reports of logistical challenges and confusion around voting modalities, some allegations of voting irregularities and tension between party supporters, but also cases where polling went smoothly and where voter turnout was high and participation peaceful.  These messages, including both those generated by ordinary citizens and by domestic observers with the National Council of Civil Society Organizations in Guinea, were generally unconfirmed but were submitted in real-time.  While they in no way represent a scientific sample of the integrity of the voting process, the ensemble of the reports that Alliance Guinea received do not contradict the conclusions that international observer groups such as the Carter Center and European Union have issued expressing the lack of evidence on the whole of systemic electoral fraud.

At the same time, Alliance Guinea supports the right of all candidates, citizens and civil society groups to make formal complaints of fraud and pursue the legal options open to them under the Constitution of Guinea. All Guineans need these efforts to be seen through to their legal end in order to objectively and transparently conclude the electoral process. Alliance Guinea encourages all the parties that took part in the elections and the tabulation of results to cooperate with investigation efforts.

Alliance Guinea deplores the outbreak of violence in the wake of the provisional election result announcements, both between citizens and also the cases of disproportionate response of the armed forces and evidence of serious human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings, including targeting of certain ethnic groups. These recent aggressions in Guinea, and particularly the ethnic-based violence, do not reflect the historic ability of the country’s citizens to co-exist peacefully for the good of the country.

We wish to remind everyone of the repeated statements made by both presidential run-off candidates that “we are one Guinea” and of the commitments each candidate signed to avoid violence and reprisals. Alliance Guinea calls on the current government and General Sekouba Konate in particular to increase efforts to maintain peace and order. It must do this while respecting the universal human rights of all citizens regardless of political persuasion or ethnicity, and to discipline the members of the armed forces who have abused these rights and otherwise engaged in disproportionately violent behavior.

Democracy does not begin and end with a single election.  Guinea’s next president will have the responsibility of helping to build democratic and well-governed institutions that have the capacity and integrity to do the people’s work: using Guinea’s vast natural and human resources to promote the sustainable development of the country. The president will also be responsible for assuring that free and fair legislative elections are held in 6 months’ time, and new presidential elections in another five years.

The GV10Witness citizen monitoring system has remained online following Election Day and in the wake of the provisional result announcements.  It is our intention that this system continue to act as a deterrent to people who seek to unravel the social fabric of Guinea and as a way of recognizing those citizens and officials who step in to prevent hatred and violence.

We call on all citizens, groups and parties of Guinea; the Guinean diaspora; the international community; and all friends of Guinea to remain highly vigilant in the promotion of democracy, justice, and peace in the Republic of Guinea during the end of this transition to civilian rule and as the work of governing begins. As Guineans of all ethnicities and friends of Guinea ourselves, we issue a particular call to our friends and family to resist political forces that would have us turn against each other. And for all those who share our values, we ask that you speak out for both peace and a just resolution of the cases of human rights abuses witnessed both before and after the elections. This will be a long-term process, and we must go forward together to ensure the peaceful and just transition of Guinea to lasting democracy.

-Alliance Guinea

allianceguinea@gmail.com

Alliance Guinea’s Statement on the Guinean Elections, Post-Election Violence and Banning of SMS Communications is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, ICC Prosecutor (Fuente: AP)

It looks like Captain Moussa Dadis Camara is done consuming his good days as head of the ailing State of Guinea.  The good times when he publicly humiliated his aids, and was the daily hero of the “Dadis Show” seem to belong to a distant past, never to be relived again.  In the space of three days the series of resignations from his ministers and other aids have made his government look like a burning house from which all roaches and other harmful bugs run away to safety.  Footage of him shown on TV presents a beaten man, a sleepless drunkard desperately looking for something –a good reason- to hang onto power, to be vindicated.

Yet it appears that the International Criminal Court is looking at things from a completely different angle.  According to the office of the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, “A preliminary examination of the situation has been […] initiated in order to determine whether crimes falling under the Court’s jurisdiction have been perpetrated.”  The investigation will practically address issues of public rape allegations and mass killings of unarmed protesters, all facts that have been clearly documented by pictures already distributed through the internet and other media outlets.

It becomes therefore clear that the CNDD is not but a sinking boat as the Deputy prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda herself, made the irrefutable statement that: “From the information we have received, from the pictures I have seen, women were abused or otherwise brutalized on the pitch of Conakry’s stadium, apparently by men in uniform.”  She terms these committed crimes as “Appalling, unacceptable” before adding that “It should never happen again.  Those responsible must be held accountable.”  Facts being what they are, Camara has tried to distance himself from these crimes by alleging that he does not control the army. But last Wednesday in Addis Ababa the European Union’s aid chief, Karel De Gucht, was categorical on the issue: “The principal leader of the coup must be held accountable for his acts before a court for a crime against humanity. The 28 September repression has been the most brutal in the country and we have before us a serious case of a crime against humanity.”

Of course, the arrogance that characterizes the junta, the degrees of hate and disdain that its soldiers are showing toward the population and its predisposition to order or commit crimes at any occasion must have played a big role in the unshakable positions of the international community that has found no solution to the Guinean plight but to make sure that the junta serves as an example.  “International justice must be universal, if not it loses its credibility,” said the European Commissioner Karel De Gutch.

As for Hillary Clinton, the American Secretary of State: “Guinea’s military rulers must quit;” a statement that has been welcomed by the Guinean “Forces Vives”.   Until then, the Obama administration, beside an unyielding position of its representation in Conakry, had not been openly vocal against the junta; a relative silence that Dadis Camara himself had praised saying: “I thank President Obama for not criticizing me,” in an attempt to denigrate the US Embassy in Conakry.  But now, that time seems also to belong to the past.  Another blow that also contributed to shaking the CNDD was of course the decision by France to “cut military cooperation with Guinea,” and to abandon Dadis to himself.   The International Contact Group on Guinea, whose members come from various international organizations, has also recommended the complete “withdrawal of the CNDD” and has called for “a new transitional authority in Guinea.”  The African Union has given Dadis only until October 17^th to openly make the statement that he will organize free and fair elections this coming January, and that he and other members of his government won’t be on the race.

The least one can say is: things look bad for Dadis Camara and the CNDD.  Yet time is not to complacency.  Still voices of denial are rising from Conakry. Andre Cece Loua, the Guinean Minister of foreign affairs lately argued that international forces can’t be sent into Guinea because it’s a sovereign country; an argument that does not hold as “Guinea has been a State Party to the Rome Statute since 14 July 2003,” meaning that crimes against humanity perpetrated in the country can well be prosecuted at the Hague by the ICC.

While waiting for what the ICC investigations will result to, Guineans have their eyes turned toward China who’s 7 Billion Blood Dollars contract with the junta raises eyebrows about the kind of relationship this rising China is ready to have with Guinea.

Mamadou Maladho Diallo

Correspondent of Le Lynx – La Lance in New York

Member of Alliance Guinea

The International Criminal Court to Investigate the September 28th Massacre in Conakry is a post from: Alliance Guinea