Coffins & Broken Backs

A year and a half ago, France abruptly stalked out of Guinea, and left it to fend for itself, the first nation to declare its independence from the new French Community. A small, impoverished country the size of Oregon, on Africa's western bulge, Guinea had no administrators to replace those the French took with them, and President Sekou Toue a handsome and tough political organizer, had more experience in rabble-rousing than in governing. Last week, there were alarming signs that out of a combination of ineptness and ignorance, Guinea was rapidly becoming a police state under the cold direction of imported Communist instructors.

Lost Teeth. In sweltering Conakry, once a cheerful little city where the Africans ate out of doors by lamplight and danced into the night under the mango trees, the streets were deserted by 10 p.m. and the houses dark and locked. By day, the Capitol's 80,000 people went about their business nervously. The secret police, guided by Communist instructors imported from Czechoslovakia, were equipped with concealed Czech-made wire recorders, listening for the chance remark that would betray a "Gaullist enemy of the state."

Last month hundreds of hapless Guineans were arrested on suspicion of plotting the overthrow of the government on behalf of "French colonialism and its black lackeys." They were an unlikely bunch of plotters: petty crooks caught black-marketing, government officials charged with smuggling trunkloads of the new currency over the border, and young intellectuals led by brilliant, French-educated Ibrahim Diallo, a former civil servant who had asked Toure's permission to form an opposition party.

A few details of the arrests and their aftermath have leaked past Toure's rigorous censorship. According to foreigners recently in Conakry, five prisoners were beaten and tortured to death at the interrogation in Alpha Yaya military camp. Their remains were sent home in sealed coffins, and police waited until the coffins were underground before they left. An employee at Alpha Yaya said police knocked Diallo's teeth out and ripped out his fingernails. The relatives of another prisoner were told to come and get him. They found him crawling on his hands and knees, his back broken. He died three hours later.

There were no defense lawyers present when 40 of the suspects were hauled before a secret "People's Court" three weeks ago. For Diallo, as well as the Moslem imam of Conakry's Coronthie district (who had called Toure's regime "irreligious") and 17 others, the sentence was death: the others, including three Frenchmen and a Swiss youth, drew long jail terms. Last week, the government disclosed that one of the Frenchmen had already died. "Heart attack," said the brief announcement.

New Captives. The 1,000-odd Frenchmen who are still living in Guinea are harassed at every turn. Some have been jailed for failing to stand up in theaters when Guinea's national anthem was played; one drew three months ("willful deterioration of Guinea's national heritage") for practicing with a revolver against the trunk of a mango tree. Airline officials have laid on 25 extra flights in the next few weeks to take care of Frenchmen and their families headed for home.

Guinea's growing totalitarian atmosphere has been worsening almost since the first day of independence in 1958. "The government and the Assembly are nothing," said Toure last September. "They exist only to implement decisions of the party." Last year Communist agents from abroad flocked in to help with Red barter deals and aid programs, which Toure was happy to accept as an alternative to bankruptcy. Now Czechs, Poles, East Germans, Hungarians and even Red Chinese have their fingers in almost every facet of the government from the physical education program to economic planning. Under their guidance, Guinea has replaced the French franc with a currency of its own printed in Czechoslovakia. Western goods have vanished from shop shelves, and Communist cement clogs the wharves in payment for Guinea's bananas.

Sekou Toure's defenders say that, despite his admiration for Marxist one-party control, he himself is no Communist and would like to expand Guinea's ties with the West to offset Moscow's growing hold. They suggest he might even approach the U.S. for economic aid before long. But a group around him, including Red-lining Defense Minister Keita Fodeba, presses for total elimination of private enterprise --and more arrests. If Toure is indeed no Communist, he seemed fast becoming the captive of those who are.

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