U.S. protests killings, rapes in Guinea

CONAKRY, Guinea — The Obama administration has injected itself into the crisis in Guinea, taking the unusual step of dispatching a senior diplomat to protest the mass killings and rapes here last week as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for "appropriate actions" against a military government she said "cannot remain in power."

"It was criminality of the greatest degree and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice," Clinton said. The military seized power here last December, and pressure has been rising as coup leader Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, 45, backed off a pledge not to run in this country's presidential elections in January.

At a demonstration against him Sept. 28, witnesses said soldiers opened fire on the crowds and raped and sexually assaulted female protesters.

Human-rights officials estimate as many as 157 people were killed. The government has put the number at 56.

On Monday, William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant Secretary of State, met with Camara for two hours. He blamed Camara for the violence, despite the military strongman's repeated denials.

Fitzgerald said he also repeated that he should not run in the elections, a key opposition demand.

The response from the mercurial captain was noncommittal, he said.

U.S. pressure is limited in Francophone West Africa, to which it typically has paid scant attention. But Fitzgerald's meeting with Camara is seen as significant by Africa experts as an example of President Obama's push for good governance and human rights on the continent — the focus of a speech he gave in Ghana in July that is still widely commented on in the region.

A month later, Clinton traveled to eastern Congo to speak out against the systematic rape of girls and young women amid the sectarian strife there. She has made the fight against mass rape a major theme in a foreign policy that focuses on the plight of women in the developing world.

The official's visit comes after a week of international expressions of disgust over the violence at the Stade du 28 Septembre here. The stadium is named for the day in 1958 when Guineans voted against an offer of partnership from their colonial master, France, setting the stage for independence days later. Guinea was the first country in French-speaking Africa to declare independence.

The lush, resource-rich country has had a singular story from the beginning: for over a half-century it suffered under dictatorships brutal even by the standards of restive neighbors like Sierra Leone and Liberia. Camara seized power last December in the wake of the death of the country's longtime dictator Lansana Conte, who ruled for nearly a quarter-century.

On Tuesday, The New York Times obtained photographs showing bodies in a pile and lined up, perhaps as many as 20, but with no blood on them.

The military regime has claimed that many victims at the stadium were trampled. But the bodies shown represent only a portion of the dead, and scores of witnesses insist most people were shot. Days after the protest, the major hospital was still treating people suffering from gunshot wounds, and scores of people say they are still missing their loved ones.

One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her.

In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers.

The cellphone pictures are circulating anonymously, but multiple witnesses corroborated the events depicted.

Even more than the shootings, the attacks on women — horrific anywhere, but viewed with particular revulsion in Muslim countries like this one — appear to have traumatized the citizenry and hardened the opposition's determination to force out Camara.

Diplomats said the violence had irreversibly undermined Camara's standing with other countries.

If internal opposition continues to grow, Camara may be forced either to leave power or to tighten his grip with an even more authoritarian regime.

The exact number of women who were abused is not known. Because of the shame associated with sexual violence in this West African country, victims are reluctant to speak, and local doctors refuse to do so. Victims who told of the attacks would not provide their names because they were afraid of retribution.

But the witnesses are adamant. "I affirm, in categorical fashion, that women were raped, not just one woman," said Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, 34, an opposition leader who said he had been severely beaten himself. "I saw many rapes."

Three women who said they had been attacked described their ordeal this past weekend. "We didn't know the soldiers were going to harm us," said the middle-aged woman, who said she could not sleep at night. She spoke slowly in a darkened room, seated on a bed with two other women. They were in a villa in a district at the edge of the capital here.

"We heard gunfire," she said. "I tried to flee." With weapons going off, suddenly "it was like a henhouse."

She ran, but a soldier barred the way.

"He hit me," she said. "And he tore my clothes off. He ripped my clothes off with his hands."

Then, she said, "he put his hand inside me." The soldier hit her on the head with his rifle, requiring stitches, she said. She also had large welts on her backside from the beating.

"We are traumatized," she said slowly, looking down.

Diallo said he saw at least 10 women raped at the stadium.

Describing one such assault, he said: "I saw a woman who was stripped naked. They ripped off, they tore off her clothes. They surrounded her. They made her lie down. They lifted up her feet, and one of the soldiers advanced. They took turns."

One woman interviewed at the suburban villa here described how a soldier had ripped her robe off with a knife. She had a large cut on her backside, where a soldier had stabbed her with his knife, and deep bruises on her shoulders.

The third woman said she had been whipped by a soldier. "When I went out, I saw one of the soldiers lying on top of a woman," she said. "A lot of women were raped."

Corroboration of the attacks came from at least one foreign-aid organization in the Guinean capital.

Jerome Basset of the Conakry mission for Doctors Without Borders said his team had treated three rape victims and three other victims of sexual violence in the hours after the demonstration.