UN appoints team to probe political violence in Abidjan

The United Nations has appointed a team of three human rights experts to investigate alleged abuses committed during the Ivorian government’s heavy-handed repression of a banned opposition demonstration at the end of March. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement on Thursday that the team would travel to Cote d’Ivoire next week to investigate the political violence in Abidjan on 25 and 26 March, during which dozens and possibly hundreds of people were killed. The team comprises Vera Duarte, a former Supreme Court judge in Cape Verde who now heads the West African country’s National Committee of Human Rights, Eugene Nindorera, a former Human Rights Minister in Burundi, and Franca Sciuto of Italy, who was formerly the chairperson of Amnesty International. Sciuto took part in an earlier international commission of inquiry into human rights abuse in Cote d’Ivoire in 2001. The Ivorian government maintains that 37 people died in Abidjan during two days of street clashes and house-to-house manhunts by the security forces at the end of March. However, opposition parties maintain that 350 to 500 were killed as the security forces crushed the protest against President Laurent Gbagbo. The Ivorian Movement for Human Rights (MIDH) estimates that about 200 died and 400 were wounded as police and soldiers fired live ammunition into crowds of civilian protestors and personnel in military uniform rounded up suspected opposition activists. Many of these raids are thought to have been carried out by unofficial paramilitary groups. One of the UN mission’s tasks will be to accurately determine the number of people killed in the orgy of violence. Another will be to investigate reports that many of those killed were buried in secret mass graves. Internal Security Minister Martin Bleou has denied the existence of such body pits. The daily newspaper ’24 heures’ reported earlier this week that another mass grave was thought to exist in Gagnoa, a large town 250 km northwest of Abidjan in the middle of Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa-growing belt. The area is the homeland of Gbagbo’s Bete tribe and has been the scene of repeated clashes between Bete villagers and immigrant farmers from neighbouring countries and other parts of Cote d’Ivoire. A UN official told IRIN that the visiting human rights team would probably investigate the Gagnoa report. The UN commission of inquiry is due to present its report by the end of April.