Army announces measures to curb violence in Bangui

The chief of staff of the armed forces of the Central African Republic (CAR), General Francois Bozize, has detailed a number of steps to be taken to reduce continuing violence and to ensure a return to peace in the capital, Bangui. The announcement, made by Bozize on Tuesday on Radio Centrafrique, follows a failed coup attempt on 28 May at the residence of President Ange-Felix Patasse by a rebel faction of the military that owes its loyalty to former president and general Andre Kolingba. Citing “failure by residents to observe the times of the curfew” and “acts of violence of all kinds”, Bozize announced that “the following measures will, from now on, be enforced: First, military patrols will be organised during the day and at night to apprehend all law-breakers. Second, any soldier, gendarme, policeman or any other armed individuals found in an area not within their jurisdiction will be arrested. Third, anyone involved in acts of violence, sporadic shooting or criminal activities aimed at causing anxiety among the people will be dealt with militarily.” On Tuesday, tens of thousands of Bangui residents were reported to still be displaced. Earlier, on Friday 15 June, UNICEF, the lead agency dealing with the humanitarian situation in CAR, received in Bangui an aircraft from Denmark carrying some 40 mt of humanitarian supplies, including high-protein biscuits, medicine and water-purification materials for vulnerable populations, according to a UN spokesman. Responding to persistent allegations of violence against Yakomas, Kolingba’s ethnic group, Patasse on Saturday denied any victimisation of the Yakoma people, adding that the coup perpetrators alone were being targeted. “Don’t confuse Kolingba and the army. Kolingba transformed the army into something ethnic. I am trying to correct this, to return the army to its true mission, which is the army of the whole republic, a multi-ethnic army,” Patasse told the BBC on Monday. However, in an interview on Sunday with Radio France Internationale (RFI), Patasse admitted that “soldiers were nervous because they were not expecting this coup”. Kolingba and his supporters are still being sought, though they are believed to have fled the capital. Patasse has declared a bounty of US $33,000 for Kolingba, dead or alive, according to news reports. Sidiki Kaba, head of the International Human Rights Federation (FIDH), told Radio France Internationale (RFI) that “nothing justifies the witch-hunting and ethnic cleansing currently taking place.” “We are saying that all this must stop,” Kaba said. “There should not be any collective sanctions against Andre Kolingba’s tribe. We are calling on the authorities to engage in political discussions, as soon as possible, in order to find a political solution to the crisis.” General Amoudou Toumani Toure, the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was on Friday scheduled to discuss “reports of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations which are reportedly still going on in the aftermath of the coup attempt and which are targeting certain ethnic groups linked to [Kolingba]”, according to a UN spokesman. General Toure told a press conference Saturday that “there is something fundamental in Bangui today. It’s fear. The people are afraid to go to work, afraid of everything. The first step is to reassure people in the area, to seek out those still hiding in the bush.” Toure, a former president of Mali, played a key role in resolving CAR military uprisings, also led by Kolingba, in 1996 and 1997. “I am emotionally attached to this country. So, my work is to see in what ways, after the difficult situation the country underwent, can we restore things back to normal so that daily life can be resumed and security restored to enable the people to live in peace,” he told Radio Centrafrique on Friday, 15 June. At a press briefing on Sunday, Patasse defended the military intervention of Libya and of a rebel faction from the neighbouring DRC to support his administration. He said Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi as a “personal friend” whom Patasse had asked “to send a small number of troops to protect me”, AFP reported. As for Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo (MLC) in the DRC, Patasse noted that the Ugandan-backed rebels controlled a vast swathe of territory in the DRC across the Ubangui river border of the CAR. “I am keen to maintain a peaceful climate on both banks. If policies regarding our neighbours are not durable, we will find ourselves in a war situation. My brother Bemba and my son [young DRC President Joseph] Kabila must reach out to each other, and the Ugandans and Rwandans must leave the Congo,” he told AFP. Patasse repeatedly accused France of having supplied weapons to Kolingba. In an interview with the BBC on Monday, he condemned “the neo-colonialist France which sent these arms, and which sent officers and mercenaries to kill the Central African people. These are the weapons we found at Kolingba’s house,” Patasse said, indicating boxes of weapons bearing the French flag in the garden of his Bangui residence. Patasse has called for an international tribunal to determine who was behind the effort to remove him. France, meanwhile, has vigorously denied having had any role in the attempted coup, and announced on Friday, 15 June. that it would grant emergency humanitarian aid of three million francs (US $387,763) to help displaced people return to their homes. French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Bernard Valero told AFP that “this aid will be put into effect directly by our embassy [in CAR] in close coordination with the Central African authorities and other donors”. Last week, the government estimated the toll of the fighting as 59 dead, comprising 25 soldiers and 34 civilians, and 89 injured, while civil society sources said that the number of victims was far higher, especially among the Yakomas. The Central African Republic, a former French colony that stretches from northern savannah bordering Chad to southern rainforest bordering the DRC, remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. Patasse first became president in 1993 in the country’s first-ever multiparty elections. Kolingba led two earlier unsuccessful coup attempts against him, in 1996 and 1997, reportedly motivated by insufficient military salaries, after which a French-backed African force, followed by a UN peacekeeping mission, was sent to CAR. Patasse won re-election in 1999 amid opposition claims of fraud. Division in Bangui mirrors the country’s ethnic split between Patasse’s north and the south - home to Kolingba, as well as to independence President David Dacko and the late Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who crowned himself emperor before being toppled in 1979.