Lettre envoyée par le BDP-Gabon Nouveau à Kofi Annan, Secrétaire Général de l'ONU, le 27 janvier 1999, au sujet des violations des droits de l'homme au Gabon lors des grèves de l'USAP et de l'UOB.

Kofi Annan
Secretary General
United Nations

Wednesday, January 27, 1999

Re: Condemnation of Human Right Violations in Gabon

Mr. Secretary General:

As a Gabonese citizen now residing in the United States where I am a professor at Montclair State University (New Jersey), and as the Coordinator of BDP-Gabon Nouveau (Bongo Doit Partir), a recently-created political movement which, from the United States, sets itself in exiled opposition to the Omar Bongo regime in Gabon, I wish to bring to your attention the situation now facing the small Republic of Gabon, a country which as you certainly know has been the political and economic hostage of Omar Bongo, the despotic autocrat who has been its self-proclaimed ruler for the past 31 years.

On December 6, 1998, presidential elections were held in Gabon which saw the last hope for a peaceful political transition irremediably shattered by Bongo's desire to maintain himself in power forever. As one could have expected, Omar Bongo self-proclaimed himself president of Gabon again for another seven-year term by adjudicating himself an electoral victory that no true believer in the principles of democracy could ever validate. As a matter of fact, the Carter Center, which was supposed to send observers to this election, finally decided not to do so because it concluded that these elections would not be fair and transparent. The new seven-year term Bongo has just fraudulently secured will, if used, confirm him in his sad position as the second longest ruling president in Africa (he will have spent 38 years by the end of this new term) after Togo's Eyadema.

As you certainly know, the month of January 1999 has been a month of political instability in Gabon. For at least a month now, civil servant trade unions (USAP), as well as students have been on strike demanding better socio-economic conditions. However, Bongo responded to their demands with the utmost violence, sending the police to forcefully dismantle the marches organized by the demonstrators. On Thursday 21, the very day when Bongo was inaugurating his new 7-year term, Gabonese students hardened their positions because their demands were not being heard by the regime. On Friday 22, faced with the determination of our students to remain on strike as long as their demands would not be satisfied, the Bongo regime launched a military assault on the demonstrators that led to serious injury and possible deaths among the students. Several hours later, the Bongo regime decreed the closing of all schools in Libreville for a non-specified period and was preparing a repatriation of students from Libreville to their hinterland villages..

Based on the record of arbitrary rule that the Bongo regime is known for, the fear in Gabon is now that schooling would not be able to resume for the rest of this academic year, thus compromising the right of our youth to decent and continued education.

Mr. Secretary General

Cleary, Bongo's regime is violating the human rights of our people at several levels:

1) It is limiting our people's freedom of expression by limiting their right to demonstrate

2) It is violating their physical integrity through military assaults and violences that have left many injured and tortured by Bongo's police.

3) It is depriving our youth of their right to an education, thus violating not only the provisions of our national constitution, but also the provisions set forth in the United Nations Charter on Human Rights.

Mr. Secretary General

Bongo has caused only misery and despair to his people. In a country which, in sub-Saharan Africa, ranks first in income per capita, one is surprised to find the kind of deprivation which the Gabonese have been subjected to by a cleptocratic regime that, for three decades, has confiscated the country's treasury for its own private use, leaving the rest of the nation in a state of underdevelopment that is utterly startling: no decent hospitals and medecine for the poor, no roads that deserve that name, a sickly reliance on mineral wealth that has exposed the country to the heavy fluctuations in oil prices, no self-sufficiency in foods and other commodities, a rampant AIDS epidemic, galloping inflation, and much more. To cap these socio-economic failures, Bongo has developed a sophisticated Gestapic system whose object is to suppress the sociopolitical liberties of our nation.

Since 1990, the year when Gabon resumed pluralist politics after 23 years of dictatorship, Bongo has used multiparty elections as a cover that would help him give legitimacy to his continued abuses of the people's Gabonese human and civil rights. As you know, the 1989-1990 upheavals in Gabon almost led to the collapse of the Bongo regime. He was able to cling to power only thanks to France's military and political support. Since then, Bongo has used all possible frauds to maintain a firm grip on power, while giving to the international community the false illusion of political stability and legitimacy.

Mr. Secretary General

Gabon is now living under one of the most debilitating forms of undeclared dictatorships one could ever imagine. The recent election in Gabon may mislead one into thinking that Bongo won reelection (66.55%) due to considerable popular support. Nothing is further from the truth. Bongo's actual popularity is at the lowest and he could never win a truly democratic election in Gabon, despite the divisions in the opposition. Let me explain the insidious and pervasive ways in which the Gabonese dictatorship works under the misleading cover of "democracy":

• Since 1990, each important election (for president or parliament) held in Gabon has been fraudulently won by Bongo. Each of these victories has elicited sociopolitical protests that have often turned into outright popular insurrections. Military interventions have often crushed such demonstrations, sometimes at the cost of innocent lives. After nine years of struggle during which the Gabonese have kept hope that they may be able to get rid of Bongo through the peaceful means of democratic elections, they have only seen such elections stolen from them again and again.

• The most immediate consequence of this has been that the people have ended up losing all hope of ever getting rid of Bongo through peaceful means. Psychologically, such a realization has led to an incredible fatalism that has caused the people to start to fear for their social positions within the country because Bongo has used his powers to make it clear that anyone who was not supportive of him would not be able to earn a living in Gabon. The 1998 presidential elections have epitomized such fears. The Gabonese have now come to the realization that their vote does not really count because Bongo has always imposed himself, even when he has been voted out of office. They have come to the conclusion that any possibility of alternation during Bongo's lifetime was not possible. Faced with such an impossibility, their lives have been reduced to the survival instincts that come with fatalism: discouragement has crippled them, and the international community has not been supportive of their efforts.

• When we thought we were making some progress in matters of democracy and freedom of expression, we have once more been gagged by Bongo's system. Bongo is no longer afraid of popular insurrections because he has been able to contain all of them militarily so far. This has therefore emboldened him into sinking back to his pre-1990 Gestapic ways with impunity. Thus, fear of political retribution from the current regime has paradoxically re-surfaced at a time when we thought this sort of regime was no longer possible in Gabon. Since 1990, our populations had the courage to oppose and fight Bongo's regime because they expected Bongo to lose through transparent elections. Unfortunately, these expectations have been deceived each time and, today, people are more than ever afraid to speak up their minds, to declare their political stances or even to demonstrate. They think that all those efforts have become useless: they have come to realize that Bongo can be deposed only through military force. Because of this, realist fatalism has forced them not to risk their lives anymore for a struggle that was lost in advance. Any activism in the current conditions of political threats and retributions could only lead to their losing their meager jobs or their being banned from any sort of public office as long as they would be against Bongo's regime.

This insidious dictatorship, Mr. Secretary General, has only one parallel: Hitlerism. Thanks to French military and intelligence assistance, as well as his own, Bongo is so well informed about his political opponents that the Gabonese administration has simply become Bongo's blackmailing tool: one gets and/or maintains a position therein only when one vows allegiance to his regime. In a country where the government is the sole true employer, one is forced to conclude that Bongo has simply hijacked the Gabonese administration, and turned it into a partisan body, instead of the neutral body it should have remained. Thousands of Gabonese are therefore living under the fear of revealing their true political affiliation because they know they would lose their position or be physically threatened.

Mr. Secretary General

Anyone who has witnessed, or heard of the unfortunate Jewish plight under Hitler's Gestapo regime may find striking similarities between Hitler's unbridled dictatorship and cruelty, and Bongo's pervasive and insidious dictatorship. The fact that the successive French governments have provided unwavering support to such a man is beyond comprehension. However, one thing is certain: French support to Bongo has shown that France has never sought the well-being of the Gabonese people. The Gabonese nation has clearly lost trust in a French government whose open support to Bongo has created the conditions for the continued suffering and deprivation of the Gabonese people.

Mr. Secretary General

Africans, and the Gabonese people among them, are now looking forward to a United Nations leadership that would help Africa dismantle the parodies of democracy that African despots have adopted, only to legitimize and consolidate their grip on power. For Gabon, we are expecting a more agressive policy and stance that would help our people rid themselves of a leader who has not cared much for the well-being of his people. Indeed, the United Nations must look more closely into Gabon's democratic parody under Bongo and:

1) refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Bongo's newly-fabricated regime. Such a move would certainly weaken Bongo and lead him to the realization that the time for him to leave has indeed come.

2) condemn with vigor Bongo's repeated violations of human rights in Gabon, above all his continuous physical and moral assaults on our students. Such condemnations would certainly help to prevent further military violences and aggressions against the Gabonese people, while garanteeing our students' right to an education.

Mr. Secretary General

As a result of the December 6, 1998 fraudulent elections, I decided to launch the BDP-Gabon Nouveau (Bongo Doit Partir, pour la construction d'un Gabon Nouveau) not only in order to begin a debate about Bongo's role in Gabon, but also to seek ways in which international bodies such as the UN could help us secure an immediate political transition in Gabon. Our movement seeks to organize itself around the specific objective of leading to Bongo's departure from office by all the means at the disposal of the Gabonese people. This is because we believe that Bongo's departure and the suppression of his system are the sole conditions for true democratization and socio-economic prosperity in Gabon.

The newly-formed government (as of January 25), which mostly contains the same old figures who have helped to ransack Gabon for the past 31 years, does not hold any promise for improvement. Bongo has simply decided to continue to exploit his people in total impunity.

As a result, the BDP-Gabon Nouveau defines itself as an exiled political movement that recognizes that:

• Gabon is still under a firm autocratic rule that makes it impossible for people who want true freedom to survive therein, unless they sell their soul to Bongo.

• After over ten years of negotiations (since 1988) with, and activism against, the Bongo regime, all internal political actions that have sought a peaceful transition to truly democratic rule have failed. Gabon therefore needs a political voice in exile that would vent to the world its desire for freedom and a more humane treatment. BDP-Gabon Nouveau will seek to fulfill this task, even though its members may become the target of physical termination by the Mafia behind Bongo's regime. In the past, this Mafia state has been responsible for the assassination of political opponents within and outside of Gabon. They may resume such activities against the members of the BDP-Nouveau because what they fear most is a political organization that would militate against them from abroad, above all if it is doing so from the United States.

• Bongo and his French allies do not want the establishment of true democracy in Gabon, and have therefore chosen to hold Gabon and its peoples hostage by suppressing all their political, cultural and socio-economic aspirations. This has denied the Gabonese their right to the pursuit of happiness.

• It is false to assume that Bongo is the only protection against violence and the total collapse of the country into anarchy as some foreign observers (mostly French officials) have held it. On the contrary, we believe that the apparent stability of Gabon is an artificial one under which the fire of revolt is constantly burning; that this fire is suppressed only by the dictatorial and dehumanizing means Bongo uses to discourage opposition and maintain himself in power: military menace through his French-trained Presidential Guard, socio-economic threats, instigation of ethnic divisions, etc. As a result, it is Bongo's continued presence at the head of the Gabonese state that represents a clear and present danger for the stability of Gabon. Because of his authoritarian grip on power, Gabon will ultimately break up into irreparable violences. We need international assistance in helping us get rid of our dictator before it is too late. We do not want our country to become another Congo because of a man who would have maintained himself in power for so long that the only means for his people to remove him would be through violence and instability.

Mr. Secretary General

We, the Gabonese people, have had enough of Bongo's animalisation of his country's citizens. We are asking therefore asking that the UN:

• condemns Bongo's current aggression against his people

• condems Bongo's violations of his citizens' human rights

• condems Bongo's fraudulent re-election

• promotes an international isolation of the Bongo regime by all the UN members who care about the development of democracy in Africa, specifically in Gabon

• promotes an economic embargo against the Bongo regime so as to pressure him into leaving office. The Gabonese people need a new leader and a new regime that can bring them the prosperity and peace they deserve. None of these can be achieved under Bongo.

Mr. Secretary General

We believe such an action would send a strong message not only to the Bongo regime, but also to all the other African despots, that the UN is no longer ready to let regimes such as Bongo's get away with the crimes against humanity that they are committing daily.

Yours very sincerely,

Dr. Daniel Mengara
Coordinator, BDP-Gabon Nouveau