Government confirms paramilitary role in Abidjan unrest

The Ivorian government has accused “parallel forces in army clothing” of committing atrocities during last week’s banned opposition march and said these shadowy gunmen were continuing to terrorise residents in Abidjan. The admission by Internal Security Minister Martin Bleou, added weight to reports by diplomats and relief workers that private militia groups supporting President Laurent Gbagbo were responsible for many of the killings in last week’s orgy of political violence in Cote d’Ivoire’s main city. Bleou said on state television on Thursday night that his ministry had received numerous “credible eye witness reports” that “individuals or parallel forces in army clothing carrying automatic weapons or kalashnikovs” had been “terrorizing” many of Abidjan’s three million inhabitants. The minister, who formerly headed a local human rights movement, stopped short of explicitly accusing these militias of last week’s killings. The government says 37 people were killed as the police and army fired live bullets at unarmed civilians on 25 March to disperse a banned opposition protest demonstration against Gbagbo’s alleged unwillingness to implement a 15-month-old peace agreement aimed at ending Cote d’Ivoire’s civil war. However, opposition parties claim 350 to 500 people were killed during two days of street clashes and raids by armed men on the houses of suspected opposition supporters in Abidjan’s poorest suburbs. The independent Ivorian Human Rights Movement (MIDH) has estimated that over 200 were killed and 400 wounded. Bleou, who formerly headed another group, the Ivorian League of Human Rights (LIDHO), denied opposition allegations that many of those killed last week had been secretly buried in mass graves. On Thursday the minister visited two of the alleged sites - one of which was a refuse tip located near an army barracks - but he said afterwards he had found no evidence of mass killing. In October 2000, a mass grave containing nearly 60 bodies was discovered in the working class suburb of Yopougon following an outbreak of election violence. Gbagbo had been sworn in as president two days earlier. Although calm has returned to Abidjan by day, residents of the the low-income suburb of Abobo, told IRIN that the suburb was still being terrorized by armed men wearing military camouflage who come late at night in army vehicles. Abobo and Yopougon were the main epicentres of last week’s clashes, during which many suspected opponents of the government were taken away by armed men who broke into their homes. Several residents of Abobo told IRIN that they now operated an informal alarm system to alert their neighbours whenever these sinister vehicles started to prowl. “They come at night…they banged on our door but when we turned on the lights they left…we can then raised the alarm by banging on our pots and pans… soon the entire neighbourhood was banging. It lasted from midnight until five in the morning,” Coulibaly, a plumber, said. He said such scenes were regularly repeated throughout Abobo. It is a religiously and ethnically mixed neighbourhood, which is home to many immigrants from neighbouring West African countries and a stronghold of the opposition Rally for the Republic (RDR) opposition party led by former prime minister Alassane Ouattara. Coulibaly said there was a general belief that the night-time prowlers in Abobo were not members of the “regular armed forces,” but he added: “we don’t know, so we have to remain prudent.” The United Nations is readying an international inquiry team to investigate the latest events. But a Dakar-based Pan-African rights organization, RADDHO, has gone further, calling for the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute crimes and abuses committed since 2000, the year of Gbagbo’s election. “We call for an international tribunal because the Ivorian judicial system doesn’t work. It is incapable of investigating or prosecuting those responsible and cannot even identify those involved,” Alioune Tine, the secretary general of RADDHO, told IRIN on Friday. Tine said an international court could help end the cycle of political violence and human rights abuse which have taken place since 2000. “That’s how things started in Rwanda”, Tine warned, predicting that presidential elections in due in October 2005 would spell further trouble. On Sunday, the UN will formally establish a peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire, the UN Operation in Cote d’Ivoire, which is generally known by its French acronym ONUCI. This will eventually deploy 6,240 international peacekeepers across the country to maintain security and supervise the eventual disarmament of rebel forces which have occupied the north of the country since the civil war broke out in September 2002. General Abdoulaye Fall of Senegal has been appointed commander of the international force. He currently heads a 1,300-strong West African peacekeeping force, which from Sunday will become part ONUCI. A further 4,000 French peacekeepers will remain in the country outside the UN command structure, but they will act as a rapid intervention force to support ONUCI in the vent of further trouble arising. The UN peacekeepers are arriving in a country whose broad-based government of national reconciliation has virtually collapsed, leaving power entirely in the hands of Gbagbo and his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party. The coalition government, which included rebel and opposition representatives, was formed a year ago, but over the past month 26 of its 41 ministers have withdrawn. Most of them left in protest at last week’s killings. Negotiations on how to resume a dialogue between Gbagbo and the opposition and put implementation of the January 2003 peace agreement back on track, remain at an impasse. On Wednesday, the rebel movement and the four political parties who called last week’s ill-fated protest demonstration, said they would only resume talks with the president after he scrapped a decree banning public demonstrations and acknowledged their “constitutional right” to protest.