Demonstration against UN goes off peacefully

Several hundred youth supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo staged a peaceful demonstration against the United Nations in Abidjan on Thursday as the UN prepared to publish a report on the security forces' bloody repression of an opposition protest in March. The demonstrators staged a sit-in near the headquarters of ONUCI, the UN peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire, which lasted several hours. Contingents of police stood by but did not intervene, despite an order by Martin Bleou, the Minister for Internal Security, that they should not be allowed near the UN installations. A delegation of protestors was allowed into the ONUCI headquarters to present a statement demanding that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declare the report by three international human rights experts as null and void and disassociated himself from its authors. Radio France Internationale (RFI) published what it said was a leaked copy of their report earlier this month. The document, which was published in full on RFI's website, accused "the highest authorities of the state" in Cote d'Ivoire of deliberately planning and carrying out "the indiscriminate killing of innocent civiliians by the security forces." The document, published in full by RFI on its website said policemen, gendarmes and soldiers and shadowy militia forces operating alongside them killed at least 120 people in two days of political violence in Abidjan on 25 and 26 March. The government maintains that only 37 people died as the security forces broke up a banned demonstration which it described as an attempted uprising against Gbagbo. The United Nations, which has consistently refused to comment on the authenticity of the RFI document, is due to publish its official findings on Friday. Thursday's demonstration was called by the Federation of Students and School Pupiles of Cote d'Ivoire (FESCI) This organisation closely linked to the militia-style pro-Gbagbo youth groups known as "Young Patriots." Serge Kuyo, a FESCI leader who read out the statement delivered to ONUCI, warned that more and less gentle demonstrations against international attempts to intervene between Gbagbo and rebels occupying the north of the country could follow. "The pupils and students of Cote d'Ivoire reserve the right to use all sorts of methods during the days ahead to liberate the Ivorian people," he said. Pro-Gbagbo womens groups have called a demonstration against the United Nations for 24 May and the Young Patriots have announced plans for a big rally in central Abidjan on 29 May. Until recently, the pro-Gbagbo youth groups directed their wrath mainly against foreign involvement in Cote d'Ivoire and particularly against France, which has 4,000 peacekeeping troops based in the country and which brokered a peace deal last year to try and end the civil war. However, since the leaking of the document, which RFI claimed to be the report of UN human rights investigators who visited Cote d'Ivoire in April, their wrath has also been directed for the first time against the United Nations. The UN Security Council agreed to create a 6,240-strong peacekeeping force for Cote d'Ivoire in February when it seemed that Gbagbo and the rebels were at last making progress towards full implementation of their fragile peace agreement. However, since then the situation has grown more tense and the rebels and all the main opposition parties in parliament have withdrawn from a broad-based government of national reconciliation. The UN peacekeeping force was officially created in April and currently has about 2,000 troops in the country, most of them West African soldiers who were already serving alongside French peacekeepers in the country. The organisers of Thursday's demonstration said between 5,000 and 8,000 people turned up, but UN officials estimated their numbers at less than 1,000.