Ahmed Sékou Touré

See also: Sékou Touré

Ahmed Sékou Touré (January 9th 1922, Faranah - March 26th 1984, Cleveland) is the first president of the République of Guinea, in station of the independence obtained of the France in 1958, until in 1984.

In spite of a very sharp intelligence, Sékou is blocked in its social rise before independence by the racist criteria of the public office colonial, and cannot reach the positions of responsibility to which he aspires. There thus remains simple person in charge of the stations, but is invested in the trade unionism while becoming one of the leaders of the Guinean young generation. It takes part in the foundation of the African democratic Rassemblement under the banner of which it is made elect with the town hall of Conakry in 1956. He becomes shortly after vice-president of the government council.

The French metropolis is in full discussion on the Décolonisation which is announced and, at the time of the visit paid by the Général de Gaulle with Conakry to defend its agreement of union-partnership between France and her colonies promised with independence, crowd puts itself to hoot it. This incident organized at the instigation of Sékou will be worth the indéfectible hatred of de Gaulle to him. The Guineans say not to the referendum on the union-partnership with France and choose the total independence, which they obtain the October 2nd 1958 with Sékou Touré with the head of the country. It receives the Prix Lénine for peace in 1961.

Sekou Touré was blamed for the death of Amílcar Cabral in 1973.

The frictions between the France and the Guinea are frequent. The attempts at inversion of the Guinean president radio-controlled by the African cell of the Elysium which animates Jacques Foccart answer the provocations of Sékou and the repression carried out against the opposition. Fearing a pure and simple military intervention of the former colonizer, the Head of State lines up in the socialist, oscillating camp between the Maoïsme to profit from the Chinese assistances and Soviet orthodoxy to return in the good graces of the Soviet Union.

It is far from being acquired that it really had communist convictions, but in fact certainly the circumstances threw it in this camp by instinct of survival. Little by little the inversion and attempted murders whose it is the object push it with a growing Paranoïa; it makes reign on the country a mode of terror, forcing thousands of Guineans to flee repression.

Sékou Touré died in Cleveland, Ohio with the the United States by undergoing an operation of cardiac surgery. A few days after its death, its mode is swept in a popular atmosphere of enthusiasm. The concentration camp Camp Boiro Mamadou where Sékou Touré had made disappear from tens thousands of Guineans, sometimes under atrocious conditions after the inhuman tortures denounced by international Amnesty, is definitively closed.

External bond

Memorial of the Camp Boiro
http://www.sekoutoure.com/

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