This soldier testified under condition of anonymity, but his identity and occupation is known and vouched for by the RFI network of correspondents in West Africa. Since then, the magnitude of the repression and the mass rapes have been confirmed by multiple sources and testimonies. However, this testimony still contains first hand information about the state of the Guinean army, the presence of foreign soldiers within its ranks, and also forecasted the unrest and fight for power within the Guinean Army that has very recently surfaced on October 7 [fr].

Radio France Internationale agreed for Global Voices to translate and publish this copyrighted interview for human rights documentation purposes and will publish the English translation on its website.

Olivier Rogez (Radio France Internationale): Sir, you are a soldier, you belong to BATA, the Autonomous batallion of [Guinea] paratroopers, and you were amongst the soldiers who suppressed the demonstration on September 28th.

Soldier : Indeed, I took part in the bloody repression around the 28 September Stadium; yes!

RFI : I'd like to ask you first if, according to the information broadcast during the past days, you saw with your own eyes real bullets being shot at the population and the women being raped as described in all the testimonies? Did your colleagues from BATA take part in these actions?

I confirm that there have been rapes and shooting with real bullets.

On the morning of that day [Sept. 28], when you were sent to stop the opposition demonstration at the stadium, did you have precise orders?

The gendarmerie [police] were involved at first but since the police did not agree with the demonstrators, we received orders to curb this opposition, called “unruly” by our chiefs. We went there. I was among the soldiers. We could not disobey orders, that is to say, to go and curb the demonstrators, to make them understand that there is only one authority in Guinea, and to teach them a lesson. There were so many deaths, it was not even possible to count them. I felt faint, honestly, I felt faint. There were 160, 180 deads… I cannot even tell you how many corpses. And I know that during the night, on Monday [Sept. 28], they told us to retrieve the bodies. We retrieved 47, that have been buried, but I cannot tell you where exactly.

Did you personally take part in the retrieval of the bodies in the morgues?

I am a fonctionnaire [civil servant].

You were forced to go and retrieve the bodies?

We cannot say no. If you say no, you are dead.

If you say no, you are dead?

That’s right.

So, you were given weapons and ammunition?

We had weapons and ammunition and for nearly a week beforehand, we were on standby.

For a week, you were on standby?

Yes.

When you were told to curb and to give a lesson to the opposition, were you ordered to kill opponents, political leaders?

No, not ordered to kill the opponents. But a lesson had to be taught. When I say “to teach a lesson”, in military language, you know what that means!

Could you be more specific?

It means punish them, usually, without killing them, but to show them that the country is under control. That's what we were told.

Many testimonies we have gathered mention mass and collective rapes, exactions, like raping women with weapons. Were you able to identify the soldiers - or the units they belong to - who took part in these exactions?

They were people from the presidential guard, since the police were a little behind. There were not only weapons, there were sticks of wood too. We used all sorts of things. We even kicked with our feet!

You said you could not refuse to go and curb the opposition. How do you feel today [Oct. 1st]?

Since Monday, I cannot sleep. I cannot go to sleep. I only see again those horrible images, those living people, those people killed by real bullets at point blank… at the level… I cannot sleep. I have nightmares. I cannot sleep. (sighs).

Everybody killed?

There were orders, sir : to kill or to be killed.

Yourself, were you forced to kill?

(silence) It is very difficult for me to answer this question. I told you. Either you killed or were killed.

So the orders came from the higher up?

Honestly, there is no hierarchy right now in the army. You can receive orders from everyone. Everybody gives orders here, everybody gives orders. There is not one hierarchy in the Guinean army. It's a mess. It looks like organized militias. It's been a while since we have been in the army and now, honestly, it's a mess. The International community must come to the rescue, otherwise, I am really afraid for this country.

There has been lots of talk about the mess in the army. Could you tell us about this mess? How is the BATA functioning, nowadays, where you are? Have there been recruitments lately? Are there militias within the BATA?

Yes, I confirm that there are militias within the BATA. People have arrived. There are even militiamen who came from Liberia, who are currently incorporated within the Guinean army, in the BATA, with no military education, no training whatsoever. They are really murderers who are currently being recruited. Honestly, I am a soldier, but I am afraid for this country. It was not in this spirit that we seized power. We seized power to guarantee the integrity of our country, to really make our country into a great democracy. But that is not what is happening now in the Guinean army. It is truly sickening, we are scared, honestly. Even us, the military, we are scared. Currently, there are more than 600 persons incorporated in the army, elements who came out of the forest, elements who came from Liberia. We even fear retribution.

Since when are you in the military?

Since 2002.

And since you joined in the army, since you have belonged to BATA, have you seen the situation worsen?

The situation is worsening from day to day.

Are the new recruits equipped with weapons? Did you get new weapons? Are there many weapons delivered nowadays in the army barracks?

Every day, weapons circulate in our barracks. Those who are recruited and incorporated today have weapons. They are given everything: grenades, weapons, ammunition. No importance is given to the date of integration (in the army). All that is needed is to train people and show them the way to the fighting, that's all. There are young volunteers that have been recruited, and honestly, they are here solely to maintain the power in place. She does not want to give up the power. Those people are like President Conté. Now we see, even us, the true face of this leader. Even us, we are marginalized in the army. We are scared, we cannot talk. I am telling you, currently, in the army, it's total anarchy, total anarchy, total anarchy! We do not know who is who in the army today. Nobody knows today who is a captain or a corporal. They beat up General Toto, the people from the presidential guard. Corporals. There is no discipline in the Guinean army. In this army, if no intervention forces come in, I can assure you that Guinea will sink very soon into anarchy, and it will come from the very same Alpha Yaya camp (Captain Camara's barrack). All the ingredients are there for a clash, very soon, in the midst of camp Alpha Yaya. Honestly, I am afraid for this country.

Copyright : Interview by Olivier Rogez, Radio France Internationale

Footage of  Guinean soldiers shooting demonstrators in Conakry on Monday (ANSA, on YouTube)

On the very same day, Guinean blogger Konngol Afirik wrote with cold rage [fr], from Europe :

Les responsables du carnage de cette journée noire ont pour nom Capitaine Moussa Dadis Camara, chef de la junte et président de la République autoproclamé, Capitaine Tiegboro Camara secrétaire d’État chargé de la lutte anti-drogue et du grand banditisme, Général Sékouba Konaté ministre de la Défense, Jean Claude Pivi ministre chargé de la sécurité présidentielle. Encore une fois, l'Union Africaine et la CÉDÉAO et les partenaires internationaux se sont révélés ineffectifs devant un officier putschiste prêt à marcher sur des cadavres pour conserver le pouvoir.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who seized power after a bloodless coup exactly nine month ago, a day or so after dictator Lansana Conté's passing, had first raised great expectations in Guineans. Because he was young, trained abroad (in Germany), and not involved with the previous dictatorship. As Noël Etienne Gnimassou, a technician in an aluminium factory in Conakry, recalls on the “Les observateurs” website of France24 tv channel [fr], that hope lasted three months:

Le capitaine Camara est incompétent pour le poste. Il s'est contenté de travailler pendant les trois mois qui ont suivi sa prise de pouvoir : il a lutté contre la corruption, il a mis à la retraite les vieux généraux fidèles au président Conté et il s'est attaqué au trafic de drogue. Mais passé cette période, il a commencé à se sentir à l'aise dans le fauteuil de président.

On YouTube, the anonymous account “Dadis Show” has documented his fast-forward slide into dictatorial brutality with a selection of  ranting  speeches that early on cast doubts on a leader nicknamed by magazine Jeune Afrique Captain Dadis and Mister Camara [fr].

News then slowly seeped on private chat-group from residents, doctors, and foreign correspondents of savage rapes, of soldiers attempting to camouflage the magnitude of the massacre by stealing corpses from hospital mortuaries or burying them hastily on the spot.

Anonymous :J'ai une collègue qui a perdu son neveu, mais d'apres les militaires qui ont répondu a son téléphone portable, la famille ne récupérera  pas le corps. On est confine dans les maisons. C'est vraiment terrifiant.

On Thursday, the hearsay was confirmed by the chilling public testimony on French radio RFI of a soldier who took part in the blodshed “under orders.”

Captain Dadis Camara, In an official communiqué [fr], denies any responsability, accusing, alternately, the opposition and his soldiers : “Even the head of state cannot curb this movement“. It remains to be seen who is actualy leading the army, who gave orders to hunt down two correspondents of foreign media, who “threw a bad light on Guinea.”  The vast majority of commenters on diaspora newssites and Guinean forums are appaled by his “crocodile tears” and see yet another plot unfolding in his call for “international investigation” and “a coalition government”:

Oumar, a Guinean expatriate, urges Guinean, out of fear or thirst for peace, not to fall in this traps :

Son dernier subterfuge est le gouvernement d’union nationale. Le dictateur sait que si l’opposition accepte de faire partie d’un pareil gouvernement, la communauté internationale serait embarrassée dans l’application des sanctions. Comment punir des bourreaux si leurs victimes collaborent avec eux dans un même gouvernement ?Autre idée du chef de la junte pour échapper à la justice internationale : une commission d’enquête internationale avec à sa tête un « sage africain ». À qui pense t-il quand il parle de ce fameux « sage africain » ? Certainement à son mentor Abdoulaye Wade président du Sénégal voisin qui l’appelle affectueusement « mon fils » et qui est avec Kadhafi le seul Chef d’État africain à l’avoir ouvertement soutenu depuis le début.

When will it end ? In an analysis on the BBC website, analyst Paul Melly, states one of the reasons Guinea has spent fifty years now in the grip of successive dictators :

Guinea is naturally quite wealthy. It's not easy to just force down a regime through external pressure. The [previous] Conte regime survived years of the suspension of European aid without ever caving in to the EU's demands for political reform.

Uproar in Germany

Meanwhile, Guinea's plight has raised another controversy.  When it became known in Germany, where Dadis Camara received military training, that he spoke German and always sported the German paratrooper badge on his red army beret, the German department of defence stated that training for foreign officers in Germany was promoted by the German government in order to further democracy abroad and that “Berlin was not to blame if the officers embarked on a different course when they returned home.” Outrage erupted over ten pages of comments on newsites Die Welt [german]:

Angelina: Diesem Schwein sollten alle Titel und Ränge der Deutschen Bundeswehr aberkannt werden,das Fallschirmspringerabzeichen müßte ihm Frau Merkel persönlich vom Barrett reißen!

Jennifer Brea contributed editing and translation.

Fate, and hard work, brought him from rural Mali to Bamako, where he discovered and fell in love with the World Wide Web.

Joining the translators team at Global Voices in French has steered him onto a new path. He is now involved in multiple projects to promote his native language, Bambara, on the Web, and to bring more Internet access to rural Mali.

If you are on the iPhone and ‘information overload' side of the digital divide, you will appreciate that Boukary has a sobering, inspiring, and even magical story to tell in this interview.

Q: How did you discover Global Voices in French and decide to join as a translator?

It happened in December ‘08.

One day, around 8 PM, I was sitting alone in my room in Bamako when I was seized by the wish to learn more. The following words formed in my mind: “I want.” These are powerful words for me.

I got up, went to the cyber café, booked a computer and typed, “I want” in the Google search bar. I browsed the results and found Global Voices en français.

The next day, I enrolled as a volunteer translator.

Q: Your native village, Sanogola-Bamoussobougou, has no electricity, much less an Internet connection. Please tell us a bit about your life.

I am the son of Négué, a farmer, and Djènèba Kané, a housewife. I grew up on a farm, helping my parents. One evening, I was shepherding cows with other kids when we met a man on the road, a sergeant. His Suzuki motorcycle was broken. His name was Lassinè Traoré.

While we helped him, he asked if I went to school. I said “No”. He went to see my father and advised him to send me to school. For weeks, he came back, until my father gave his consent. Sergeant Traoré told me, “There I leave you. You now have the duty to do well at school to honor me, and later to take care of yourself and your parents.”

I walked six kilometers to the nearest school for years until I moved to Bamako to attend high school. I did bricklayer work and odd jobs on week-ends to make ends meet with my state grant. My mother wanted me to succeed in school, she did everything in her power.

I went on to teachers’ school. I would have liked to go to university, but I don't have the means for that. So I trained myself to use a computer and surf from cyber cafés in Bamako. The Web soothed my thirst for knowledge.

Boukary (left) and his father with a picture of him in hunting gear. Photo: Toujours Pas Sages, on Flickr

Q: How well is Mali connected to the internet nowadays?

Mali has done a lot to promote new technologies in government administration, but there’s a lot left to do to connect people, especially in rural areas.

The interest in new technologies is huge, but people cannot access them. The cost of personal computers, training and Internet connections are too high. A new laptop costs that equivalent of six months of a teacher's wages.

In Bamako, an hour in a cyber café costs around 500 CFA francs (USD $1) or even 1000 CFA francs in smaller towns. Compare this to the price of a 50kg bag of rice, which is 17.500 CFA francs (around US $38) it's well beyond the means of most people.

Q: You've not only started blogging since you joined Global Voices, but you blog in Bambara!

It so happened that Maneno.org, a blogging platform for Africa co-founded by Global Voices' author and translator Elia Varela Serra needed African translators. I speak and write in Bambara, a major language in Mali.

Bambara has special type fonts [see this post] and no keyboard. We overcame this problem with a virtual keyboard. I localized the platform in Bambara and opened my blog, Fasokan. I blog in Bambara and French about Mali, the problems of farmers, and my thoughts.

It is now my great wish to promote African languages on the Web, so that African people can relate and share across the continent. In rural Mali, many people speak and learn to write only Bambara in elementary school. I want them to be able to access the web  in Bambara too.

Boukary trains villagers in Mali to use the Internet. Photo: Toujours Pas Sages on Flickr

Q: That dream came true this summer?

My dream was to bring the Internet to my village, to introduce my family and the farmers to the Web. Through Global Voices in French, I met Albertine Meunier, who conducts internet workshops with senior citizens in France. We launched the Toujours Pas Sages (Still not wise) project on Maneno, in French and Bambara. Thanks to Fondation Orange Mali, we got a mobile Internet connection for remote places.

With donated laptops and camera phones, Albertine, her friend Caroline and I trained children and grown-ups for two weeks in Ségou and my village to use Google to find information, and use the Web to upload digital photos and videos. The villagers were so surprised that they could read and write in Bambara on the Web! It was a great success.

My father is a hunter and was very curious about hunters in America and how they hunt. On Google, he finally discovered what they looked like. And we also learned that it is possible to charge a mobile phone with a dynamo hooked to a bicycle.

Now, we are going to try and train my pupils in Bamako.

Carolina Chandra Rumuat

Carolina, the West is practically clueless about your native language. What should we know ?

There are 700 or so languages in Indonesia, almost all of them living, spoken languages. In 1928, Indonesia declared Bahasa Indonesia the national language, the language of unity for everyone in this archipelagic country. Indonesian - or Bahasa Indonesia - is the fourth most spoken language in the world

How do you fit in this vast, very diverse, young country ?

In Indonesia, I'm considered three parts minority — well, at least, I was during President Suharto's New Order era: I'm a Christian Protestant, not a Muslim, I am half Chinese, and I'm a woman. I was very close to my Chinese maternal grandparents who practically raised me. Thanks to them, I learned the importance of knowledge, and that some virtues simply stand the test of time. Like, that you should be there for those in need, and be responsive to those under oppression. My grandparents are very Chinese, but luckily their life virtues didn't come solely from the Little Red Book. Sure, hard work is something they stressed, but so was the virtue of a quiet mind (a.k.a patience) I'm a nerdy type and I don't let my passions turn lukewarm. I found writing addictive. It's not just an outlet, it brings me joy. After college, I worked as a news writer in Jakarta, then as assistant journalist in a foreign news agency in Bali.

From Bali to Casablanca, Morocco…What happened ?

In Bali, I met and fell in love with my soulmate. After a while, we had to come to terms with the fact that his business needs him to be in Morocco. Since neither of us wanted to part, I simplified the decision-making process and came with him to Morocco.

Besides this, I also learned that the media is changing quickly. Online media is no longer an alternative: it is the future. I have mixed feelings about this, but one of the good points is that at least we can spare the forests. I'm an impulsive blogger, at Between Birth and Burial, and I have huge interest in new media.

How and when did you get acquainted with Global Voices ?

My fiancé first showed me Global Voices sometime last year. I read the website and without even reading the manifesto, I knew that Global Voices embodies one of those “changes” of dynamism in online journalism. Without a second thought, I bombarded Leonard and Portnoy, heads of the Lingua project, with email pleas. I wanted to be involved because I know that Indonesians' interest in reading is low. I think that, perhaps, if news is published in their native language, their interest in international issues will grow.

President Suharto's era caused people to curb their curiosity, and now is a good time to fix that — Indonesia is one of the world's youngest democracies. That's why I sincerely feel that people should be better informed about their rights, including freedom of speech. My first translation appeared in December 2008, a few days after I officially joined. Lingua is a good platform because it encourages people not to keep their troubles to themselves, it helps them realize that in some ways our lives are amalgamated with the rest of the world, even though we speak different languages.

How did Carolina from Indonesia adapt to Morocco?

Culture shock made me slow in socializing. I landed a job about 2 months ago in an Internet start up. It allows me to learn new things about myself and how to manage people despite our cultural differences. The bright side of my job is that it allows me to meet new people and see how they see live.

Casablanca reminds me a lot of Jakarta. Big and still growing, with a cosmopolitan charm that lures people from smaller cities to try their luck here. It also has a lot of contradictions. We can see women in burqas waiting at a bus stop next to a girl wearing a miniskirt and fishnet stockings. The biggest mosque in Maghreb is only a stone's throw away from the nightlife district, which I find interesting. I haven't had much chance to travel around the country yet. The Moroccans I know say that Casablanca is not Morocco. But so far, I think Morocco is a charming country. It's not the easiest country to live in for most Asians (including myself), but all experiences are valuable. It gives me lots of material for my blog.

Please introduce us to your first volunteer translators!

Global Voices in Bahasa Indonesia currently has 4 active translators including myself. Galuh Tahtya is one of my college buddies. After moving to Casablanca, we started to swap news, and one day I told her about the Lingua project. She decided to join.

Then came Ivan Lanin, the director of Wikimedia Indonesia, who also showed interest in volunteering. We found Oktavia Sidharta through Portnoy of Global Voices in Chinese, while our latest addition, Juliana Harsianti, is also an acquaintance of mine back in Jakarta. She is currently studying in Oslo, Norway with a scholarship laureate in online media.

Global Voices in Indonesian is still a baby but we hope that it will grow as big as Global Voices in French or in Spanish. I have some plans I wish to implement soon. I want to introduce Global Voices' mission to Indonesian young minds, especially those living on the island of Bali. I also wants to get in touch with my school and bring the Lingua project to their attention. I wish to share the beauty of volunteering with youth and the Indonesian public in general. Global Voices in Indonesian is taking it one step at a time, and it's truly a labor of love.

Global Voices in Bahasa Indonesia has a Facebook page!