Forced demolitions leave thousands homeless

Residents of a poor Abidjan neighbourhood were left homeless on Wednesday and Thursday when their homes were demolished. Armed policemen stood guard as a bulldozer crashed into dwellings. Other officers prevented vehicles from approaching the area. About 100 structures, built mostly from wooden planks, plastic sheeting and adobe, were destroyed on Wednesday. More were demolished on Thursday. Electricity and water supplies were cut. The area is known as ‘Derriere Sococe’ (Behind Sococe) because it is located close to a shopping complex by that name. Its inhabitants were a mix of Ivorians and people from various other West African countries. One resident said his landlord, like many others, had leased the land from a member of the indigenous community that owned it, built structures on it and rented them. The monthly rent was the equivalent of US $10 per month, while the landlord paid the equivalent of about US $3 a month per house to the owner of the land. The tenant said he had no idea where he would go. “I thought they would have allowed us to stay until next year, because that’s what the president said,” he added. Cote d’Ivoire’s authorities began demolishing shantytowns just after an aborted coup on 19 September. The reason given was that some of the assailants who had attacked the security forces had hidden in slum areas. Thousands of people had lost their homes by the time President Laurent Gbagbo went on television to announce that the demolitions had been suspended until next year except in areas close to military installations. However, Derriere Sococe is over two km from the nearest military camp. Residents of the neighbourhood said they had had little warning. “The CRS (riot police) came at 11 o’clock,” one man said. “They said take out your things. Some people were not at home, but they broke down the houses just like that. They said they wanted to clear the area.” Knots of people stood disconsolately amid household utensils, clothing and a variety of other articles. Others hired handcarts to transport the little they could salvage. Women with bundles on their heads and babies on their backs filed past in silence. Children searched among the twisted sheets of zinc, broken posts and rubble. “I campaigned for them. I voted for them,” one distraught young woman said. “This is what I get in return. The policemen said ‘You’re Ivorians. You can go and live with your relatives’, but I have nowhere to go. I have nobody in Abidjan”. Renting a concrete house in another neighbourhood was a costly affair, the woman added. She had gone to a landlord on the outskirts of the town to look for a place to stay, but he demanded seven months’ rent up front, which came up to 105,000 CFA francs (about US $150). “Where would I find so much money?” the woman said. She pointed to her young son’s school, a structure made of planks surrounded by the ruins of destroyed huts. “They left the school standing,” she said, “but how will my son go to school if I don’t live here any more?” People whose houses were destroyed on Wednesday said they slept in the open air amid some of the wreckage. “The police told us to cover ourselves with black plastic otherwise we’d be considered curfew breakers,” one man said. [A curfew which lasts from 21:00 to 06:00 GMT/local time was recently extended to November.] There were hundreds of shacks in the area, which extended over about 1 km. About one third were destroyed on Wednesday and Thursday. Some of the remaining families could be seen ferrying out their belongings. They preferred not to wait and see if the police would deliver on their promise to return on the following day.