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BANGUI (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande flew to Central African Republic on Friday to tell its leaders and French forces stationed there that France will work to stop the country splitting in two.
A lawmaker in the Central African Republic’s interim parliament was murdered in the capital Bangui Sunday by unidentified assailants, according to the Central African League of Human Rights.
The MP who was killed was identified as Jean-Emmanuel Ndjaroua, representative of the southeast region of Haute Kotto, by the League’s chief Joseph Bindoumi.
No group claimed responsibility for killing Ndjaroua a day after he made a speech denouncing recent violence and calling for Christian militias to be confined to barracks.
Government officials said attackers followed the lawmaker, and shot him several times outside his house.
Red Cross country director Antoine Mbao Bogo said his organization had been called to collect the body.
Lynchings of minority Muslims
A weekend of violence and looting in Bangui has left at least 10 people dead, according to witnesses and a humanitarian official who spoke to AFP Sunday. The violence included two gruesome lynchings of minority Muslims.
Fighting broke out Saturday evening between Christian vigilantes and Muslims in the west of Bangui where many buildings were torched, they said.
A resident told AFP that the Muslim killer of a Christian woman was lynched and killed before his body was burned and deposited in front of the local town hall, where it could be seen early Sunday.
A suspected Christian militiaman killed another Muslim civilian, and was about to burn the body when Rwandan soldiers of the African peacekeeping force MISCA shot him dead, a witness who gave his name as Innocent told AFP.
The shooting prompted an angry crowd to shout slogans against the Rwandan soldiers, whom they mistakenly believed to be Muslim. “Death to the Rwandans,” one shouted, according to Innocent.
Five other people were killed in unclear circumstances, the witnesses said.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch confirmed the witness reports and said another Muslim was lynched early Sunday near Bangui’s central market.
The former French colony has been engulfed in violence for nearly a year since the Seleka rebel group installed Michel Djotodia as the country’s first Muslim president in a coup in March 2013.
The following months saw rogue Seleka fighters unleash a wave of atrocities against the Christian majority, prompting the emergence of vigilante groups.
The violence has raged unabated even after Djotodia stepped aside and the parliament appointed interim President Catherine Samba Panza last month, and Muslims have been fleeing the violence in their thousands.
A man was lynched Friday after he fell off a lorry in a convoy of terrified Muslims fleeing Bangui. Residents hacked him to death and dumped his body on the roadside.
‘The French won’t fire at us’
Meanwhile looting was rampant in the capital, where young people could be seen removing furniture and equipment from buildings and shops — some still smoldering from fires set on Saturday — despite the heavy presence of French and African peacekeepers as a French helicopter gunship circled above.
The peacekeepers went from door to door to try to rout the looters, who simply moved on to other targets, pushing their carts and wheelbarrows between French armored cars.
“The French won’t fire at us,” one young looter said, laughing.
The mayhem came as French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian began an African tour on Sunday in the Chadian capital N’Djamena mainly focused on the Central African conflict.
Chad, the impoverished country’s neighbor to the north, has 850 troops in MISCA and is also home to 950 French troops — Paris’s largest concentration of soldiers abroad after Djibouti.
Le Drian is to meet Chad’s President Idriss Deby, often described as the kingmaker of Bangui politics, before heading to Brazzaville for talks with President Denis Sassou Nguesso, a mediator in the conflict.
On Wednesday Le Drian will begin his third visit since the French operation codenamed Sangaris was launched two months ago.
Muslim Central Africans and foreigners have been fleeing Bangui for several months to escape killings, looting and harassment by armed Christian militias.
The International Criminal Court said Friday it had opened an initial probe into war crimes in the Central African Republic.
Atrocities, the fear of attacks and a lack of food have displaced almost a quarter of the country’s population of about 4.6 million, while the United Nations and relief agencies estimate that at least two million people need humanitarian assistance.
The landlocked country has been prone to coups, rebellions and mutinies for decades, but the current sectarian conflict is unprecedented.
1 of 6. Personnel from the African Union peacekeeping mission to Central African Republic (MISCA) control a fighting crowd near the airport, in the capital Bangui December 28, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Andreea Campeanu
BANGUI (Reuters) – Hundreds of people tried to flee inter-religious violence in Central African Republic on Saturday aboard emergency flights to neighboring Chad, while nearby countries appealed for help to rescue their citizens from the mounting humanitarian crisis.
Tit-for-tat violence between Muslim Seleka rebels, who seized power in March, and Christian self-defense militias have killed more than 1,000 people this month in the riverside capital Bangui and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Fighting in the former French colony has surged in recent weeks despite the presence of 1,600 French peacekeepers and nearly 4,000 African Union troops deployed under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. Bangui was calm on Saturday.
The ‘anti-balaka’ militia have targeted Muslims they say have supported Seleka during months of looting and killing since March. With many Seleka gunmen coming from Chad, its citizens in particular have been singled out, prompting their government to charter flights this week to bring them home.
However, many of those who waited in the heat at Bangui airport were Muslim Central Africans who said they were fleeing their majority-Christian homeland for fear of reprisals.
“We have never known violence as barbaric as this,” said Aishatou Abdelkarim, 31, who said she was married to a Chadian. “The devil has taken control of our country.”
Chad’s Foreign Minister Moussa Faki said some 4,000 Chadians had been transported home so far, many of whom had lived in Central African Republic their whole lives. That is just a fraction, however, of the hundreds of thousands of Chadians living in landlocked Central African Republic.
More than 800,000 people have fled their homes during this month’s fighting, with about half of them seeking refuge in Bangui, the United Nations says. It appealed on Friday for $ 152 million to help meet emergency humanitarian needs such as drinking water and sanitation in makeshift camps.
Tens of thousands of people have sought safety at the international airport, where French peacekeepers have a base. Women and children waited beside piles of suitcases and bags.
Cameroon flew home 214 of its citizens on Friday, bringing the number evacuated this month to 926, state radio there reported. Senegal and Niger, meanwhile, have asked the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for urgent help in extracting hundreds of their own expatriates.
CONGOLESE KILLED
Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion in a nation where Muslims and Christians have long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa’s most weakly governed states.
“We used to live in perfect harmony with the Christians but it is Seleka and the anti-balaka who are trying to divide us,” said Issa Baro, a 35-year-old Muslim trader from Chad, waiting to catch a flight home.
Chad’s Foreign Minister Faki said toppled President Francois Bozize was responsible for the surge in violence in recent weeks and was using the anti-balaka to undermine interim President Michel Djotodia, Seleka’s leader.
French President Francois Hollande told U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon by telephone on Friday he wanted greater U.N. involvement in Central African Republic. Ban is preparing a proposal for a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Two Congolese peacekeepers were killed when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen late on Thursday, a day after six Chadian peacekeepers were killed, a spokesman for the African Union’s MISCA peacekeeping mission said.
Two French soldiers were also shot dead in early December.
(Additional reporting by Serge Leger Kokpakpa; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Erica Billingham)
BANGUI (Reuters) — Mariam watched in horror as militiamen burst through the gate of her home in Central African Republic’s capital Bangui and demanded her husband say whether he was Muslim. When he said yes, they shot him dead.
“They killed him just like that in front of our child,” said Mariam, who fled through the back door. “Then they hacked and clubbed our neighbors, a husband and wife, to death.”
The two-day frenzy of violence in Bangui this month — in which militia killed 1,000 people, according to Amnesty International — fed fears that Central African Republic was about to descend into religious warfare on a scale comparable to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
The slaughter — a response to months of atrocities by mostly Muslim fighters from the Seleka rebel group who seized power in March — prompted France to immediately deploy 1,600 troops under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.
Religious leaders had sounded the alarm over abuses by the Seleka after they burned churches, looted and killed during their southward march on the capital early this year. The violence has displaced some 700,000 people so far.
Many in the country insist that the origins of the bloodshed have little to do with religion, in a nation where Muslims and Christians have long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa‘s weakest-governed states, split along ethnic faultlines and worsened by foreign meddling.
“We carried out these attacks because we have been invaded by foreigners by Chad and Sudan,” said Hercule Bokoe, a member of the militia, known as “anti-machete” and set up for self defense before the Seleka rebels arrived. He said his group’s aim was purely political: it would fight on until Seleka leader Michel Djotodia, installed as interim president, left power.
“We said to ourselves that the country cannot continue to be held hostage by foreigners,” Bokoe told Reuters.
“POLITICAL CONFLICT”
Rich in diamonds, timber, gold, uranium and even oil, Central African Republic has been racked by five coups and numerous rebellions since independence from France in 1960 as different groups fought for control of state resources.
That — and spillover from conflicts in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Chad — have destroyed the rule of law, leaving a phantom state with an ill-disciplined army, corrupt administration and a lawless interior.
Djotodia and other Seleka leaders launched their uprising to gain access for northern peoples to resource wealth — particularly oil being exploited in their northern homeland by the China National Petroleum Corporation.
Djotodia says his northern Gula tribespeople — Muslim pastoralists neglected both under French colonial rule and post-independence governments — were betrayed by former President Francis Bozize, who sought their aid for a 2003 coup but surrounded himself with his Gbaya tribe once in power.
With support from battle-hardened Chadian and Sudanese fighters, many of them also Gulas, Seleka swept southward, overrunning not only Bozize’s poorly equipped troops but also a South African peacekeeping force in March.
Once in Bangui, unable to speak French or the local Sango language, Seleka fighters sought out Arabic-speaking Muslims and stayed with them, often hoarding looted goods in their homes.
Non-Muslims equated this with complicity, said Archbishop of Bangui Diedonne Nzapalainga, with the devastating effects seen in the early December violence.
“To non-Muslim locals, Muslim now equals Seleka and Seleka equals Muslim,” said Nzapalainga, who for months has worked with Muslim clerics to try to calm rising religious tensions. “We came out early and declared that this conflict was not a religious conflict but a political one.”
“CHAD IS THE MASTER”
Djotodia, 64, waged an unsuccessful uprising against Bozize in the late 2000s using a network of Sudanese and Chadian support he had established during his time as consul in Nyala in Sudan’s southern Darfur region earlier that decade.
But a rift between Bozize and his main military backer, Chadian President Idriss Deby, shifted the balance of power in Djotodia’s favour. Deby, who had helped install Bozize as president in the 2003 coup, withdrew his Chadian presidential guard last year.
Witnesses said Chadian peacekeepers simply stood aside when Seleka troops — led by a former member of Deby’s own presidential bodyguard — marched on Bangui. As Bozize’s replacement in the presidential palace, it is now Djotodia who enjoys the protection of Chadian bodyguards.
Many in the capital say ethnic ties between the Seleka and Chadian soldiers participating in a 3,700-strong African Union peacekeeping mission (MISCA) are complicating efforts to resolve the crisis.
Residents in Bangui have accused Chadian troops of supplying Seleka fighters, turning a blind eye to their activities, and even attacking Christians themselves. Olivier Domanga, a resident of northern Bangui, said Chadian troops distributed dozens of weapons to Muslim inhabitants of his neighborhood.
“Chad is the master of Seleka and Seleka is its attack dog,” said Philomon Dounia, another Bangui resident.
Chad says its peacekeepers are neutral and denies supporting Seleka or distributing weapons to Muslims.
After opposition politicians and civil society activists demanded the Chadians’ withdrawal, MISCA’s commanding officer, Cameroon’s Martin Tumenta Chomu, said on Tuesday they would be moved outside the capital to northern Central African Republic.
WORST EVER LOOTING
Even in a country inured to rebellions, Seleka’s atrocities have proved shocking. It has been exacerbated the lack of a command structure in the loose coalition, whose name means ‘alliance’ in Sango. Warlords carved up territory where they had the power of life and death as they sought to extort money, particularly from non-Muslims.
Acknowledging he was powerless to control the fighters in a country the area of France, Djotodia announced the official dissolution and disarmament of Seleka following outcry from the international community, but this had little effect.
As Seleka torched villages and massacred entire populations, the “anti-machete”, or “anti-balaka” — initially local militias paid to defend crops and cattle against robbers and highwaymen due to the absence of state security — began seeking revenge.
According to local animist beliefs, members of the militia have magical powers that protect them, and amulets they wear make them invincible.
“The anti-balaka have nothing to do with the church or Christianity. Calling them a Christian militia is wrong,” said Nzapalainga, who said the ranks of the militia were swollen by people who had lost belongings or loved ones to Seleka.
“To them, it is revenge. I have heard people say this is the ‘return match’,” he said.
Louisa Lombard, an anthropologist specializing in Central Africa Republic, said tensions between Muslims and Christians had increased over the past decade but this was due largely to the success of Muslim traders with contacts in Chad and Sudan, rather than a rise of religious extremism.
“It is more an issue of the Muslims being considered foreigners by the Christians,” she said.
Despite these tensions, many Central Africans are proud of their tolerance and tradition of cohabitation and inter-marriage.
Imam Oumar Kobine Layama, leader of the country’s Muslims, was offered refuge at St. Paul’s church in Bangui by Nzapalainga after his family was threatened. In the capital’s northern PK5 neighborhood, Muslim youths guarded the St. Mathias Catholic church and protected Christians.
Helen Tofio, one of 40,000 people who fled to Bangui airport to seek safety near a French camp, voiced concern that ongoing tit-for-tat violence would sow the seeds of religious strife.
“We used to live in harmony with Muslims before the arrival of the Seleka,” she said. “But their abuses, and the attitude of some Muslims who seem to be supporting them, have given rise increasingly to religious conflict.”
Central African Republic’s President Michel Djotodia sits during a conference in Bangui December 8, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Herve Serefio
BANGUI (Reuters) – Central African Republic’s interim leader is weighing a possible amnesty for militias involved in Christian-Muslim violence that has killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians, in exchange for their disarmament.
The majority-Christian country has been paralyzed by cycles of killing, torture and looting since Michel Djotodia’s mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in March.
Djotodia has since lost control of his former fighters, whose abuses have led to the emergence of militias, known as the anti-balaka, meaning anti-machete in the local Sango language, opposing them.
In a sign of continued instability within the transitional administration, Djotodia dismissed three members government on Sunday, including Security Minister Josue Binoua whose home was raided by police during the violence last week.
More than 1,600 French troops deployed this month to try to stop the violence that has displaced more than 680,000 people – nearly one-seventh of the country’s inhabitants – according to the United Nations.
The former rebel leader said in a state radio address late on Saturday that he had been contacted by a representative of the mainly Christian and animist anti-balaka, who were demanding inclusion in the transitional government he leads.
Elections are due to take place in 2015, however the government in Bangui exerts little control even within the capital.
“The anti-balaka sent us an emissary and said they want to lay down their weapons and leave the bush, but they fear for their security. They gave preconditions … They asked for an amnesty and entrance into government,” Djotodia said.
“Contacts are already established and we will pursue these exchanges in the interest of peace for all Central Africans,” he added. “We don’t see the harm, because this is the price of peace.”
The anti-balaka, along with gunmen loyal to ousted President Francois Bozize, attacked Bangui last week, triggering more killings and reprisals that have deepened inter-religious conflict. More than 500 people were killed and 189,000 have been displaced in the capital alone.
A government spokesman said that Djotodia was not ruling out any of the demands made by the anti-balaka and was planning to reach out to other groups for similar talks – which might also mean the Seleka rebels.
“The president will consider anything that will lead to peace in Central African Republic,” Guy-Simplice Kodegue said.
In a handwritten press statement seen by Reuters on Sunday, an anti-balaka group calling itself the Youth of the Anti-Balaka Revolution called upon its members to observe an immediate ceasefire to give peace talks a chance.
It was unclear how many fighters the group represented.
Rights groups expressed skepticism over whether an agreement with the loosely affiliated militias could bring peace.
“I think the question is whether there is enough structure among the anti-balaka to deliver on promises to lay down arms” said Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.
MINISTERS FIRED
Central African Republic is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium, but it has seen little stability and, since independence in 1960, France has intervened there more than in any other former colony.
The firing of the three ministers on Sunday risks worsening tensions because it was not carried out under the terms of an accord that led to the formation of the transitional government.
Government spokesman Kodegue said a number of crates of weapons of all calibers and some military material were found at the security minister’s house.
“Minister Binoua always claimed not to have weapons for the gendarmes and police. Where did these arms crates come from?”
Binoua could not immediately be reached for comment.
Finance Minister Christophe Mbremaidou, who Kodegue said had been unreachable during the crisis, was also sacked, along with Rural Development Minister Joseph Bedounga, who was accused of criticizing the government during the violence.
A senior government official, however, told Reuters that Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye had not signed off on the dismissals as required under the terms of the country’s transitional administration.
“He was not even consulted and only heard about it like everyone else over the radio,” the official said, calling Djotodia’s changes to the cabinet “null and void”.
(Additional reporting by Nicholas Vinocur in Paris; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Alison Williams and Mohammad Zargham)
