IRIN Focus on human rights issues

Security forces in Cote d’Ivoire have been committing severe human rights violations, including rape and torture, against detainees, two Ivorian human rights organisations and Amnesty International have said in separate declarations and reports. On Tuesday, Constance Yai, head of the Association ivoirienne pour la Defence des Droits de la Femme (AIDF), called on the minister of the interior, decentralisation and security, Emile Boga Doudou, to apologise on the state’s behalf to women who, she said, were raped while in detention. The women were among people detained following protests by the opposition Rassemblement des Republicains (RDR) on 4-5 December. Yai, who was the minister responsible for women’s affairs in the government of General Robert Guei that ruled Cote d’Ivoire until 25 October, also called for an investigation. Her call came four days after another Ivorian rights group, the Mouvement ivoirien des Droits de l’Homme (MIDH), issued a report detailing atrocities committed during the early December protests. The report said 365 people, including six women, who were arrested on 4 December in the Abidjan neighbourhood of Cocody, were taken to the police training school, where they were kept naked for two days. Policemen “beat them with wire, car cables and glowing (heated) tree branches”, it added. The detainees, who were later joined by others, were also burnt on the back with hot irons, MIDH said. An Amnesty International team which visited the police training school on 7 December with the authorisation of Boga Doudou said it found visible traces of wounds and burns on the bodies of detainees. Women “systematically raped” MIDH said women “were systematically raped” while in detention. A member of the organisation told IRIN on Wednesday that its officials had obtained testimonies from two women who were raped and have since been released. According to MIDH, more than 1,000 people were detained in connection with the protests, sparked by a Supreme Court decision that RDR leader Alassane Ouattara was ineligible to run for election in parliamentary polls held on 10 December. There were 37 deaths and 406 people were injured, according to the rights group. It said most of the victims were shot from behind, some were tortured to death and many had been taken from their homes at night while a curfew lasting from 21.00 to 06.00 hours was in force. It also said some RDR militants killed members of the security forces. MIDH reported that some state hospitals refused to tend to people wounded during the unrest. It also said that some detainees had not received medical attention and complained that, while its officials had been able to visit some detainees, it had had difficulty gaining access to others. Confronted by Radio France Internationale (RFI) on 11 December with the accusations by the MIDH, Boga Doudou said: “I would very much like to react to these accusations. I agree with you that they are serious, but they are not based on any facts, because speaking about rape, whose fault is it if there is rape?” He added: “I’d like to note that in a locality like Tengrela (in the north) there was an attempt by RDR militants to rape nuns. And when you attack the security forces with firearms and weapons, with blades, and wound many them, do not be surprised by the reaction of the security forces.” Boga Doudou said he challenged MIDH Vice President Ibrahima Doumbia to prove that people were being tortured in detention. Asked whether he had visited the places of detention, Boga Doudou said: “I had my deputy permanent undersecretary in charge of security visit these various places, and you can be sure that as early as this week, the situation will be regularised, notably all those who were rounded up for not respecting the curfew will be freed very rapidly.” On Wednesday, state television showed Boga Doudou visiting municipal employees and policemen wounded during the December events. “These are agents of the state,” he said, adding that they had almost lost their lives during the course of duty. An “incessant cycle” of abuse This month’s reported abuses were the latest in what Amnesty described as “the incessant cycle of extrajudicial executions (and) arbitrary arrests followed by torture that has characterised the country since the military coup on 24 December 1999”. In mid-year, a French television crew filmed gendarmes beating a woman who had participated in an RDR demonstration. Reports that other women had been beaten and raped during that demonstration were carried by the local press. Other victims, Amnesty said, included soldiers detained following an alleged attack on 18 September on the home of General Guei. Those detainees were tortured and three died as a result, according to Amnesty and local media reports. Presidential guards and other members of the security forces shot and killed peaceful demonstrators during popular protests that forced Guei out of power on 25 October, two days after he proclaimed himself the winner of presidential elections. The polls were held on 22 October. Further atrocities were reportedly committed by security forces on 26 October when RDR demonstrators took to the streets, calling for the annulment of the presidential election, according to Amnesty, MIDH and other sources. Security forces, especially gendarmes, were accused of killing and beating RDR supporters as well as people with Muslim or northern Ivorian surnames: people from the mainly Muslim north, especially those of Ouattara’s Dioula (Malinke) ethnic group, are seen by many in Abidjan as supporters of the RDR. On 27 October, 57 bodies were found dumped in a field in the Abidjan neighbourhood of Youpougon. Others were later discovered in a lagoon. The government ordered an investigation into both discoveries. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed shock at the October killings and appointed Ambassador Colin Granderson as chairman of an international commission of inquiry to be set up to help look into them. Granderson arrived in Abidjan in early December on a preliminary mission. A human rights advocate told IRIN that many of the abuses committed in December were perpetrated by the same members of the security forces who committed human rights violations in October, encouraged by the impunity they had enjoyed. He expressed fear that unless abuses were investigated and their perpetrators punished, they would recur. Amnesty also warned that the impunity which, it said, the security forces have enjoyed over the past year “could lead to new human rights violations”.