A Chadian elite soldier, Rose Lokissim (1953 – 1986) opposed Hissène Habré and his political police in the 1980s. Arrested, she leaves many testimonies on the crimes committed at the time.
Hissène Habré comes to power
Of her life, of her own existence, Rose Lokissim has left few traces. What she left, on the other hand, are precious testimonies of her time, of crimes, exactions, political imprisonments, on pieces of paper, bits of packing cardboard, packets of washing powder, cigarette paper, anything that came to hand. And which make it possible to reconstitute, beyond its own passage, the fate of very many political prisoners.
Rose Lokissim was born in Chad in 1953, at a time when the country was part of French Equatorial Africa. Chad gained independence in August 1960, and in the following decades experienced a serious period of political instability and several wars. In 1982, Hissène Habré overthrew the Head of State Goukouni Oueddei and took the place of President of the Republic. He immediately asserts an authoritarian power, removing the office of Prime Minister and executing political opponents. He creates the Directorate of Documentation and Security (DDS), a political police that will commit thousands of kidnappings and assassinations.
Cell C
Rose Lokissim is one of the first women to become an elite soldier in Chad. When Hissène Habré took power, the young woman, aged 29, immediately joined the opposition. “I will never submit to this diet” , she says, “I will never accept it” . Arrested in September 1984, she was imprisoned in the “Locals” prison, in the terrible cell C, nicknamed the death cell. In this unsanitary, windowless and overcrowded space where she is the only woman among sixty men, people do indeed die every day.
Rose is imprisoned there among the political prisoners, beaten, tortured. When she was transferred to a women's cell, her fellow prisoners testified that she was then extremely dirty, covered in lice, with very tangled hair. Fearing that she would escape, her executioners ended up bringing her back to the men's cell. Despite the atrocities and the hell of daily life, Rose strives to galvanize her companions in misfortune. His fellow inmates report his words:“Hold on tight until we get out of this prison because we are the ones who are going to change the course of things” . They call her strong, determined, courageous.
“She is unrecoverable”
Determined to resist even from her cell, and despite the danger to her life, Rose Lokissim works daily to write down everything she sees, everything she experiences. Her goal now is to get information about what's going on inside out, through letters from prisoners she helps smuggle and through her own notes. She writes everything, on all the media that come to hand:the names of the prisoners, the tortures, the punishments, the executions.
For these testimonies, for these bits of information that she passes on to inform the families, Rose is denounced. The DDS came back to look for her in 1986, questioned her, tortured her. Rose confesses, but concedes no remorse. The report of her last interrogation indicates:“during two years of detention, the person concerned did not change her language but on the contrary glorified herself. She is irretrievable and continues to undermine state security even in prison “.
Rose Lokissim was executed in May 1986, the very day of her last interrogation. Of her last moments, her executioners would write:“She affirms that, even if she has to die in the dungeon, she regrets nothing because Chad will thank her and History will speak of her” . Suspected of having caused the death of almost 40,000 people, Hissène Habré, overthrown in 1992, is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of torture. In 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal.