Soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have massacred hundreds of people and burned villages, forcing civilians to flee, during a counter-insurgency campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday.
In a report released in Paris, the watchdog group blamed President Francois Bozize’s elite guard for atrocities carried out since mid-2005, but said other military units, their rebel foes and bandit groups were also guilty.
The worst violence occurs just across the CAR’s north-eastern border with Sudan’s strife-wracked Darfur region, where the ”army has killed hundreds of innocent civilians and forced tens of thousands to flee their villages”, said Peter Takirambudde, HRW’s Africa director.
In the north-west of the former French colony — which has a history of economic misrule, civil strife and army uprisings — the report describes attacks by bandits called ”zaraguinas”, who often kidnap children for ransom, according to researchers who spent three weeks on the ground.
Bozize first came to power in a bloodless military coup against the highly unpopular Ange-Felix Patasse in 2003 and went on to win an election in 2005, but his government in Bangui has little real control over the lawless north.
The full report says Bozize’s own forces are to blame for multiple summary executions and unlawful killings, widespread burning of civilian homes, and the forced displacement overall of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
One example given in a 108-page document called State of Anarchy: Rebellion and Abuses Against Civilians concerns a presidential guard unit based in the north-west garrison town of Bossangoa, accused of many killings and village burnings.
Men from that single force ”often killed dozens of civilians in a single day, and some of the killings involved unspeakable brutality. On February 11 2006, for instance, the presidential guard killed at least 30 civilians. The same presidential guard unit beheaded a teacher on March 22 2006 in Bemal.
”Killings have continued up until last month, with soldiers robbing and killing four Chadian civilians and wounding four others, including two women, in the border town of Kabo in August 2007,” HRW reported.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs holds that at least 102 000 civilians have been driven from their homes by attacks against their villages, according to the figures in the report.
”The sorry fact is that the perpetrators of violence and abuse, the majority of them government soldiers, have so far enjoyed total impunity for acts that include war crimes,” Takirambudde said.
Twin aspects of conflict in one of Africa’s poorest countries are spill-over from the conflict in Darfur, which has occurred in neighbouring Chad and led both Bozize and Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno to blame Khartoum, and rebellion further west by former Patasse loyalists.
The report said one such group, the Popular Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy (APRD), is ”engaged in widespread extortion and forced taxation, looting of livestock, kidnappings for ransom, beatings of civilians”, but HRW said the army was worse than the rebels.
In its recommmendations, HRW urged the United Nations and European Union, who are currently considering deploying a force to Chad to protect civilians and Darfur refugees, to ensure it has a mandate and capacity to provide effective protection to civilians in CAR.
It also urged France, which earlier this year provided Bozize with military air transport and jet fighter missions against rebels, to put pressure on the regime to discripline its forces and improve its rights record. – AFP
