Building a new country in an old jail

In this final article of a three-part story, our correspondent on the ground speaks with someone whose past, present and future are irrevocably shaped by Guinea-Bissau's intolerant politics.
About six metres long and four wide. This could be a conference room anywhere in the world. Whitewashed walls, flatscreen – easy to imagine a group of people sitting here, talking, watching a presentation, taking notes.
Not so easy to imagine over a hundred people incarcerated here, in the heat, dirt and stench of human waste. That is how it was. This room was an underground prison. The heavy iron door, painted a bright blue, is a reminder.
“You know, we have added an extra window next to the door and still people sometimes find it hard to breathe,” says Nelson Constantino Lopes, who has taken me here. He points at two slits high up the wall: “That’s where the air came from. Prisoners died of asphyxiation.”
The story of this house
Constantino Lopes is coordinator of Casa dos Direitos, the ‘House of Human Rights’, and the fact that it is located here is deliberate. “It’s the first-ever prison built in Guinea-Bissau,” he says. “Many barbaric things happened here. This was a house of torture and murder. Now, it is an open space, a place where we work for human rights.”
The Portuguese built it and used it as an underground interrogation centre. The liberators, the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), under leadership of the charismatic Amilcar Cabral, promised they would close it after independence.
They did not. Cabral was murdered and Guinea-Bissau became a one-party state. “The torture continued,” recalls Constantino Lopes. “Now that we have changed it into a house for human rights, we have people coming in and saying they were imprisoned here. They don’t tell us everything that happened to them. But we are looking for ways to help them, so they can unburden themselves. It’s important that we tell the story of this house, it’s important for the collective memory of this country.”
The same road
Post-independence Guinea-Bissau was clearly an eerily intolerant place where thousands disappeared, were tortured and killed.
Constantino Lopes has been a human rights activist since he was a student. He also has a deeply personal connection with his workplace. His father spent time in the dungeon below his office. “He was working for the Portuguese ministry of the interior, as a chief of police,” he tells me. “He kept on working after independence. It was politics that got him imprisoned.”
But it’s not only the past that matters. “Yes, my father’s imprisonment is a strong motivation for me to continue,” says Constantino Lopes. “But it’s about a lot more than my father. He was there before me, on the same road…a road that will lead to a new republic. I have children and I want them to live in a Guinea-Bissau where there is peace, where human rights are respected, where there is more freedom and less poverty…”
The will of the people
Strangely ironic, then, that much of the country’s current troubles began right across the road from Casa dos Direitos, there in the military fort the Portuguese also built. From there, between first and second rounds of the presidential elections, began the 12 April coup.
Constantino Lopes is resolute. “This was a coup against the will of the people. And they cannot even demonstrate against it, which is their constitutional right.”
What does he make of the transitional government, arranged by the regional group ECOWAS? His sarcasm is biting. “It’s impressive: we are living in state, where a minister from a neighbouring country can come in and tell us: ‘This is your president.’”
“Impressive! But unacceptable. We don’t need any transitional arrangement. What we need is an elected president who completes his time in office. We need army reform. We need normality. Yes, this coup is a hard lesson. But let me assure you: we have started on that road to a new republic and, while this is a setback, we will not be stopped.” 
For the first article in this series, click here. For the second, click here.