NGO Requests ACPHR Investigate Guinea’s Role in Diallo Telli, Pioneer OAU Scribe’s Death

The Africa Vision 525 Initiative, an NGO that uses research-based simulation of the African Union Assembly to build Pan-Africanism in youth, has called on famous Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana, to demand the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights (ACPHR) investigate government of Guinea-Conakry’s role in the death of Boubakar Diallo Telli, first elected Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now African Union.

The request was contained in a letter to Mr Femi Falana signed by Dr Okello Oculi, Executive Director of Africa Vision 525 Initiative calling on the eminent Nigerian lawyer-rights activist “to apply legal tools to expose a putrid crime waiting for fresh air to grow seeds of medication for aiding Africa heal a festering political wound.”

The letter said Africa Vision 525 was aware of Mr Falana’s record of defending human rights, combating impunity in governance in Africa; exposing corruption as well as promoting justice and human dignity hence the request that he took this up with the ACPHR to demand justice for one of the founders of the OAU and Guinea Conakry’s pioneer permanent representative to the United Nations.

The letter said Africa Vision 525 was deeply concerned about the silence over what it calls “the official murder of Telli by Guinean authorities” through “a barbaric ‘Black Death’, involving the detention of a victim in shackles and total denial of water and food” adding that it was “Outraged by the indifference and non-intervention by Member States of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the horrendous torture and assassination of a person they had unsuccessfully appealed to President Sekou Toure to endorse their wish for Diallo Telli to serve a Third Term as Secretary General.”

The letter described Telli as a brilliant, bold, imaginative, and industrious diplomat who helped build the OAU into an effective tool for Africa’s collective post-colonial diplomacy, including drawing UNESCO to include in its charge the struggle against racism and apartheid in South Africa as well as effectively mobilizing African diplomacy against the racist regime in South Africa, “which made him a target for opposition by Governments of USA, Britain, South Africa and other NATO countries.”

Against this backdrop, the letter said these countries “Should be joined as accomplices in his arrest by President Sekou Toure while he was serving as Minister of Justice, an appointment which President Leopold Sedar Senghor saw as a cover in a plot to eliminate Telli. The prosecution of this case would serve as a landmark for rampant murders of political opponents in many African countries. It is our prayer that you would take up this historic case on a pro bono basis,” the letter concluded.