The four men wearing a mixture of military and civilian clothing
came for Outara Zoumana at his home in the Williamsville section
of Abidjan at midnight on November 19. The terrified truck driver
realizing they were the police and security forces and knowing
why they were there barricaded his doors.
He
tried to escape. But the police, stronger and faster than the elderly
man, climbed over the fence of his compound. As Outaras frightened
family scattered, one policeman shot him in the foot so that he
could not flee. Then they took him outside the house and shot him
repeatedly until he was dead. They left his bloody and battered
body near his house so that others could see. His family were later
hunted down by the police, but managed to escape.
Outaras
death was intended as a demonstration, mainly to the Dioula community
traders and workers who come from the north of Ivory Coast
of the power of the police and military, who have been operating
with impunity since a violent coup detat exploded here on
September 19, 2002. The coup failed, but the rebels continue to
hold the northern part of the country. In response, the government
has pursued a campaign of violence and terror against groups suspected
of sympathy with the rebels cause.

A
young girl walking from Bouake looks back as she walks with
her family towards Didievie, 75km south east of Bouake,
Ivory Coast on Saturday Oct. 12, 2002. (AP Photo/Christine
Nesbitt)
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A
Violent Crackdown
Hundreds
of people have been killed and hundreds more possibly thousands
are being detained by police and military. As journalists,
aid workers and human rights organisations are denied access to
prisons and lists of detainees, the numbers of those held cannot
be established. Nor can their names, or their state of health.
"We
do not know how many people are held, where they are, or if they
are being tortured or if they are dead," said a local human
rights worker. "No one is allowed access to the detained."
The
coup and the governments response have displaced more than
220,000 people, and triggered a round of ethnic cleansing, largely
targeted at northerners and foreigners West Africans from
neighbouring countries who make up a quarter of the population.
Shantytowns are razed. Every day, buses and planes are full of terrified
residents who have lived here for generations, but who cannot prove
their "ivoirite", or ethnic purity.
Local
shops and craftsmens workshops throughout Abidjan are burnt
out. Domestic workers walking to work in the morning are routinely
stopped and robbed of cash, threatened and sometimes hauled off
in the back of police cars.
Abidjan,
Ivory Coasts political capital, operates now in a climate
of fear, with the local population beginning to feel that the police
and security forces are akin to the death squads of Guatemala or
El Salvador. The tragedy is that the Ivory Coast which had
the third largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa and is the worlds
largest producer of cocoa was once a beacon of stability in
a region dominated by bloodshed. It is now threatening to explode
into a full-scale civil war that could prove to have wider consequences
than the wars of neighbouring Sierra Leone or Liberia.
An
Explosion of Ethnic Tension
The
rebels the MCPI or Patriotic Movement of the Ivory Coast
who launched the coup intend to dismantle the embattled government
of President Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo was brought to power during
violent elections in 2000, following a coup the previous year. The
MCPI evolved from a group of disgruntled army officers many
involved in the original 1999 coup who resent the continued
dominance of Ivory Coasts mainly Christian south and are pressing
for a new constitution. Since their uprising, the rebels have won
substantial support from the mainly Muslim northern population.
Tension
between northern and southern tribes has rapidly escalated. Attacks
on civilians and on newspapers that support the opposition leader,
Allasane Outtara, who has fled the country, are common. (Outtara
was not involved in the coup, but it is thought that he is now in
contact with the rebels.) More worrying are the "disappeared".
As the weeks pass and the Ivory Coast hovers between peace and all-out
war, more bodies are turning up in the swamps, in fields and in
houses.
Some
of the dead were high profile, such as the former Minister of the
Interior, Emile Bouga Doudou who was killed on the first day of
the coup; General Robert Guei, the former military leader; or others
believed to be connected to Allasane Ouatarra. But others are just
simple people: workers, traders or unfortunate relatives of opposition
politicians.
The
murder of the truck driver is directly linked to an article that
appeared in the inflammatory newspaper LOeil du Peuple,
which is a mouthpiece for President Lauren Gbagbo and his party
FPI -- Front Populaire Ivorien. The newspaper published a list of
names of 30 people working for a trucking firm said to be "transporting
guns" and claimed that they were supporters of General Guei,
who launched the coup in 1999.
"All
the drivers know where the guns are hidden in this town," the
paper wrote. "Robert Guei and Allasane Outtarra, foreign mercenaries,
terrorists...multi-national enterprises like Russian mafia...are
involved in this plot with the complicity of the al-Qaeda group."
For
the twenty-six per cent of the population who are deemed to be foreigners
mainly from Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali the crackdown
on non-Ivorians has been brutal. It doesnt matter that many
of these people have lived in the Ivory Coast for generations. The
concept of ivoirite smacks of the nationalism and ethnic
cleansing seen in the brutal conflicts in Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia. The foreigners villages, their homes, their places
of work have been targeted and destroyed. The Belgian-based NGO,
Genocide Watch, described the situation here as having all the preconditions
for a genocide.
Yet
apart from France, the former colonial power, Western governments
have all but ignored the cloud of doom hovering over the Ivory Coast.
Their only action has been to order their citizens to leave the
country.
Meanwhile
the situation continues to deteriorate. In the last few days a new
uprising has broken out in the countrys western region, the
heart of the cocoa belt, led by supporters of the murdered General
Guei and backed by fighters from neighbouring Liberia.
Report
From Daloa
Shortly
after the town of Daloa fell to government forces on October 14,
bodies were scattered along the road and in the bush north of the
town. It was the usual brutal scenario of bush war. One appeared
to be a teenager, stripped of his clothes and brutally beaten before
being shot. Another was a man whose torso was detached from his
limbs. Another was already decomposing in the equatorial heat.
The
government soldiers we were travelling with covered their faces
at the smell of rotting flesh. "This
is war and sometimes innocent people get caught in it," said
Maurice, who is part of the FANCI (Forces Armees Nationales de Cote
d'Ivoire).
Some
of the bodies appeared to be people killed during the hunt for rebel
soldiers after the government troops re-took Daloa, which had been
overrun by rebels the day before. Daloa stands on the dividing line
between the north and south of the Ivory Coast. It is an ethnic
tinderbox: split between people from President Gbagbo's Christian
Bete tribe and Dioulas from the Muslim north. Many of the rebels
are Dioulas, and the animosity of the two groups is fierce.
A few
days after the government took over, Daloa -- which produces one-fourth
of the country's cocoa -- was deserted: the shops and markets closed.
The few people on the streets were mostly Bete. The Dioulas remain
closeted in their quarter near the town's mosque.
One
Dioula man bravely ventured onto the street to find some food. He
said that even though the government troops said they were in Daloa
to protect all people, two of his brothers had been killed the day
before.
"We
have problems with the Bete," he said. "My wife is across
Bete lines. I can't reach her because if I cross the street, I am
dead."
Other
people feared being caught in the government hunt for rebels. Many
of the Dioula youth rallied behind the rebels when they captured
the town October 13. But one day later, the government moved in.
Since then, the dead bodies are a potent reminder of what could
happen if one backs the wrong side.
It
is unclear how many people have died in Daloa. "I think it
could be more than 100 if you count those who died in the bush outside,"
one official said.
The
economy has also suffered, leaving the local population desperate.
A despairing Lebanese cocoa producer said that his business had
all but closed down. In the past, his drivers were mainly Dioulas:
they are too terrified to move across Bete lines to bring cocoa
to the ports.
"I
will give it one month and if things don't improve here, I will
leave the country," he said. It is a statement echoed by many
expatriates, who are packing up their lives and fleeing, after generations
of living in the Ivory Coast.
Captives
on the Front Line
Further
on, about 15km north of the town, on the road to Vavoa, is the last
government position. The soldiers there took over the wooden shack
belonging to some cocoa workers. The children of the workers sat
staring at the anti-aircraft guns mounted on the back of pick up
trucks.
One
of the Ivoirian officers was soft-spoken, Sandhurst-educated and
wore a British-made signet ring on his pinky. The ring was emblazoned
with an elephant, his family totem. The soldier, who asked not to
be identified, said that the government forces were only doing their
duty, defending the country against rebels. He denied any human
rights abuse and said prisoners were being treated in a friendly
way.
"We
are defending an ideal," he says. "We are defending a
way of life. We don't want to have our kids living in an Ivory Coast
where people kill each other and the country is divided."
Outside
the town, some government forces had captured three rebels. They
sat shivering in the back of the truck, despite the muggy heat.
One was beaten around the head and was bleeding. All of them looked
terrified, but defiant.
One,
named Kone Nagnougo, 50 years old said he was one of the "zinzins"
the core of the rebel soldiers who all left military academy
the same year. He said they were fighting out of frustration at
being excluded from the benefits enjoyed by the Christian minority
who dominate the country. They want an end to the reign of President
Gbagbo.
A government
soldier delivered a blow to his head, told him to shut up and then
told the driver to take them to the gendarmerie, the paramilitary
branch of the army.
One
soldier, when questioned about the rights of prisoners, replied
defensively. "You have no right to talk, look what America
is doing to prisoners," he said, referring to Guatanamo. He
specifically used the term "armed combatants" to describe
the prisoners.
"The
Genie is Out of the Bottle"
Peace
talks in Lome, Togo have all but broken down and the country remains
in limbo between war and peace. As MI-24 helicopters -- flown by
foreign mercenaries working for the government -- circle Abidjan,
a mood of terror has descended on the civilian population who take
to their houses by 5.00pm, fearing that they will also be plucked
off the streets by police.
Many
shops and businesses are closed down. The economy is in tatters.
The front line runs just south of the rebel stronghold of Bouake,
Ivory Coast's second-largest city, and is held in place by French
troops who are monitoring a fragile cease-fire agreed on October
17.
More
worrying is that as the conflict progresses, the country is developing
an increasingly nationalistic mood, reminiscent of Yugoslavia in
1991. Like Tito, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's father of
independence, kept the lid on simmering ethnic tensions. Since his
death nine years ago, the divisions between the more than 60 ethnic
groups among the countries 14.7 million people have sharpened.
Diplomats
have become increasingly pessimistic, fearing ethnic meltdown. "The
genie is out of the bottle," says one.
Alarmingly,
more and more orange, green and white Ivoirian flags hang from apartment
windows and cars, and are festooned on jackets and shirts: symbols
of ivoirite. It is a way of rooting out and intimidating
the foreigners nearly a quarter of the population.
Janine
di Giovanni is a Special Correspondent for The Times of London.
A
Note on The Law
The
civil war in Ivory Coast is governed by Common Article
3 of the Geneva Conventions and by Additional Protocol
II of 1977 (both of which Ivory Coast is a party to).
These treaties oblige both sides to refrain from killing,
beating or torturing civilians who are not taking part
in hostilities, and captured soldiers. Anyone not taking
part in hostilities must be treated "humanely,
without adverse distinction based on race, color, religion
or faith."
In
addition, murder, torture, imprisonment in violation
of fundamental principles of international law, and
enforced disappearance, when committed as part of a
widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population,
would count as crimes against humanity.
Although
Ivory Coast has signed the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court, it has not ratified the treaty, so the
court would not have jurisdiction over crimes committed
during the conflict, unless the case were referred by
the United Nations Security Council.
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Related
chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know:
Civil
War
Death Squads
Disappearances
Ethnic Cleansing
Related
Links
Cote
dIvoire: Government Targeting Civilians
Human Rights Watch Press Release
November 28, 2002
Cote
dIvoire Latest News
allAfrica.com
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