Talks to end years of rebellion in the Côte d’Ivoire resumed this week at the South African capital. But although government and rebel representatives in Pretoria may be speaking of peace, the areas they control are marked by persistent human rights abuses.
A report issued earlier this month by the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Côte d’Ivoire, Opération des Nations unies en Côte d’Ivoire, (ONUCI), blamed various groups for these abuses, which included murder, torture, kidnapping and unlawful detentions.
Officials, pro-government paramilitaries, ethnic groups, and the rebel New Forces were amongst those singled out in the bimonthly report, which covered events in March and April this year.
Cases cited include the killings of Hyacinthe Kah, Adama Moussa Touré and Aboudramane Samassi.
The three were detained from March 29 to April 2 at the police station in the Plateau area of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital — located in the government-held south of the country. This followed claims that the men supported the rebels, who took control of northern Côte d’Ivoire after a failed coup in September 2002.
On April 2, the bodies of the three were discovered in the Abidjan suburb of Abobo. Those of Samassi and Touré showed signs of maltreatment, according to ONUCI.
Members of political organisations — or persons affiliated to these groups — also found themselves under attack in March and April.
Jean-Marie Gervais Kacou, a member of the opposition Democratic Party of the Côte d’Ivoire, Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), was accosted in front of his home on April 16. Four days later it was the turn of former cabinet minister Jerome Sery Assia — also a PDCI member — who was tied up in his house and abused, along with his family.
Earlier this month, further attacks took place at the homes of another PDCI supporter, Mathias Ngoan, and of Paul Akoto Yao, a former minister associated with the opposition Union for Democracy and Peace in the Côte d’Ivoire.
”The authorities have attributed these attacks to armed bandits who are sowing terror in the city of Abidjan,” notes the ONUCI report. This rampant insecurity, says government, stems from the fact that the country is at war.
However, the PDCI has issued a statement in which it accuses ”activists” close to government of being responsible for the violence. In addition, many members of the public appear to blame paramilitary death squads for the incidents. These groups are believed to have ties to government, official denials notwithstanding.
”Their military uniforms, their vehicles, and the calm manner in which they attack their opponents…leads one to believe that they are close to the current regime, even though it denies any link with such murderers,” says a political analyst based in Abidjan.
While attacks attributed to the death squads date back to 2002, no one has been brought to book for the crimes.
The groups are also held responsible for the 2003 assassinations of Benoit Dacoury Tabley — older brother of Louis Dacoury Tabley, the assistant general secretary of the New Forces — and comedian Camara Yerefe. Yerefe was associated with the opposition Rally of the Republicans (Rassemblement des républicains, RDR).
The New Forces, in turn, are accused of conducting summary executions.
”Members of the New Forces have kidnapped, detained and executed many civilians as well as persons from their own ranks who were suspected of supporting President Laurent Gbagbo. Others have been forced into exile in surrounding countries,” said Simon Mouzou, head of the human rights division at ONUCI.
Last year, three mass graves containing almost 100 bodies were discovered by a UN team in the northern town of Korhogo, a rebel stronghold. While some of these victims apparently died from bullet wounds, others appeared to have suffocated to death.
The killings took place when forces loyal to rebel leader Guillaume Soro clashed with a rival faction on June 20 and 21, 2004. Reports indicate that a number of people were arrested by Soro supporters and placed in containers, where they suffocated.
Although the international community and local human rights and civic groups have called for inquiries into the abuses which plague Côte d’Ivoire, the odds remain stacked against such investigations.
”Not only are investigations time-consuming and futile, but they also put communities…at risk,” Martine, a young woman wounded during a kidnapping, told IPS.
A group called Youth Action for Security and Peace in Africa (Action des jeunes pour la sécurité et la paix en Afrique, AJPSA) claims that 85 percent of abuse victims refuse to reveal what has happened to them because of doubts about the police.
”For these people, uniformed individuals are thought to be in collusion with the attackers,” observes AJPSA.
Although Côte d’Ivoire was an island of stability in West Africa for the first 30 years after it gained independence from France, the past decade has seen religious and ethnic differences between north and south come to the fore. Ivorians in the predominantly Muslim north complain of discrimination from people in the south, which is largely Christian. Southerners have long controlled the country.
One of the most visible instances of this bias was a court ruling that barred, Rally of the Republicans (RDR) leader Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister and Muslim northerner, from competing in the October 2000 presidential election which brought Gbagbo to power.
Ouattara was excluded from the poll after claims that his parents were foreigners. Under a constitutional amendment introduced by former president Henri Konan Bedié (unseated in a 1999 coup), only those persons born to an Ivorian mother and father could run for president.
At the time of its introduction, the amendment was widely viewed as an attempt to undermine Ouattara. It was overturned earlier this year by Gbagbo in the face of international pressure.
Côte d’Ivoire’s substantial immigrant population has also come under attack. Migrants helped fuel the country’s post-independence boom; but a subsequent downturn in commodity prices has seen them become the target of xenophobia. The Ivorian economy is heavily dependent on cocoa, coffee and rubber.
Although warring parties signed an accord in Paris at the start of 2003, efforts to bring peace to Côte d’Ivoire have stalled in the face of numerous clashes and allegations of bad faith.
South Africa is now mediating in the peace process. However, an accord drawn up in Pretoria in April has already run into difficulties over the matter of disarmament, which was scheduled to begin June 27. Mutual suspicions are preventing this process from getting underway, a matter of increasing concern as presidential elections envisaged for October 31 draw closer.
Pending the establishment of a permanent peace, government and rebel forces are separated by a buffer zone patrolled by ONUCI forces.