Pro-government militias protest against French companies

Hundreds of pro-government militia in Cote d'Ivoire on Friday took to the streets of the commercial capital, Abidjan, to protest against ongoing conflict in the country and to demand that French-owned water and electricity companies, stop serving areas under rebel control.

The bare-chested, masked militias calling themselves the Group for Peace and Progress (GPP) harassed traders in the low-income suburbs of Adjame, Abobo and Yopougon, disrupting traffic and threatening residents.

Eyewitnesses told IRIN that in Adjame, some of the militias broke into and robbed stores.

The protestors caused panic in the city. They said the rebels, who have continued to occupy areas in the north and west of Cote d'Ivoire after failing to topple the government of President Laurent Gbagbo on 19 September 2002, were getting a "free ride" from the utility companies.

"They are making us pay for electricity and water bills that the rebels consume freely in their areas. We cannot accept that any longer," one young protestor told IRIN.

Others chanted: "Free Bouake. We are tired".

Bouake, Cote d'Ivoire's second most populous city 380 km north of Abidjan, has become the headquarters of the rebel Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), the armed group that led the coup attempt.

The failed coup d'etat transformed into a rebellion. A peace agreement signed in France in January gave the rebels nine seats in a government of national reconciliation, but they pulled out of government last month. According to the rebels they pulled out because President Gbagbo had frustrated them.

Formerly state-owned, the Ivorian water and electricity companies are now owned by the French conglomerate Bouygues.

The GPP militias also prevented people from paying their bills at several water and electricity offices while the French mobile company, Orange, shut down several of its offices across the city.

Sources at Orange told IRIN that the police arrived in time at its main office in the commercial suburb of Marcory to prevent any serious damages. Police were also dispatched to the offices of the water and electricity companies.

In December 1999, the head office of Ivoris, another French mobile company that sold the franchise to Orange, was burned down by a mob in the early hours of the country's first coup d'etat in which President Henri Konan Bedie was toppled.

French businesses and interests have, since the beginning of what has become the country's longest political crisis, been ransacked and broken into by "patriotic" militia groups like the GPP. The militias accuse France of coniving with the rebels against Gbagbo.