Togo
Togolese government rejects international report

Misanet.com / IPS, 28 February - Togolese officials have denied the conclusions of an international commission of inquiry investigating charges of hundreds of extrajudicial executions in Togo in 1998. The commission was set up by the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) at the request of the government to investigate allegations made by Amnesty International in its 1999 annual report.

It found that government officials, the police, and militia members had all been involved in executions and other human rights violations. In addition to summary and extrajudicial executions, the fingered groups have been accused of torture, the mistreatment of prisoners, and the kidnap and rape of women. 

The panel noted, however, that it could not say from the information currently available, how many people were executed, how they had been killed, and how many of their bodies had been dumped into the ocean. 

The Togolese Prime Minister, Mensah Agbeyome Kodjo, says the commission had overstepped the bounds of its authority. "Togo does not feel obliged to recognise charges outside the jurisdiction of the international commission of inquiry," he said. 

In a press statement, the government played up certain of the conclusions contained in the report. "The commission, in order to avoid offending Amnesty International, limits itself to stating it can neither confirm nor deny the problem it was created to investigate," the press release said, suggesting that the commission had a bias in favour of Amnesty, the global human rights lobby group. 

Koffi Panou, the country's foreign minister, told members of the diplomatic corps stationed in Togo that the inquiry had failed to prove anything. "As far as that's concerned, the Togolese government is entirely satisfied," he said.

The government also maintains that the Togolese opposition, with the intent of demonising and discrediting President Gnassingbe Eyadema, influenced the report. Authorities say that opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio intentionally misled Amnesty and the commission and that he was behind the "trumped up" report. Olympio is the son of Togo's first president, who was assassinated. 

According to Prime Minister Kodjo, the UN-OAU report was orchestrated by Olympio, in collusion with Pierre Sane, Amnesty International's secretary general, in order to destabilise the Togolese government. Last weekend, the police violently broke up an opposition march in support of the commission and Togo's current electoral law. The government has recently indicated that it wants to change certain provisions of that law. 

Reaction to the report among the Togolese people has been varied. "It's the first time that the flagrant human rights violations in our country have been brought to the attention of the rest of the world," said university professor Marc Mawuko. "The Togolese government cannot deny the facts. We remember the bodies thrown into Lome's lagoon in 1992, the assassination of opposition leader Tavio Amourin, the massacre of opposition militants during a peaceful demonstration in 1992," stated Mawuko. 

Other more pro-government citizens support the idea that the Togolese opposition helped orchestrate the report to tarnish the image of the Togolese government. "It's a manipulation by Gilchrist Olympio, who misinformed Amnesty International and the UN/OAU commission," said Kao Jerome, a student. 

The Togolese opposition, which has declared its support for the report, questioned why the government refused to own up to its actions. "Why's the government so agitated?" wondered Jan-Pierre Fabre, the secretary general of Olympio's party, the Union of the Forces of Change (UFC). 

Fabre feels that the authorities must have guilty consciences. "Everyone knows that the present regime has always violated human rights, and there's the proof," added Fabre. 

Attorney Yaovi Agboyibo, another radical opposition leader who has applauded the report, denies the charges made against Olympio. He believes that the accusation is "the exploitation of a personal conflict." According to Agboyibo, the report's conclusions "conform to the reality we experience every day in Togo ... We concur entirely with the content of the report, which confirms Amnesty International's accusations."

- I don't understand why the Togolese government insists on denying the charges made against it, says journalist Lucien Attissogbe.

The first allegations of extrajudicial executions in Togo were made in Amnesty International's May 5, 1999 report entitled, 'Togo, Reign of Terror'. The UN-OAU conclusions are based on investigations conducted in Togo, Benin, and Ghana in November and December of 2000. The International Commission of Inquiry for Togo was chaired by Mahamat Hasan Abakar of Chad. Also on the commission were Paulo Segio Pinheiro of Brazil and Issala Souna of Niger. 

By Noel Todegnon, IPS

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