Rights groups, labour call for peace

A coalition of Chadian human rights groups and labour unions have called for “true peace” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the country’s independence from France. “Forty years in the life of Chad corresponds with 40 years of civil war, suffering, atrocities of all kinds and fratricidal struggles for power,” the group said on Friday in a statement to AFP. Recalling fighting at the northern garrison of Bardai in July, the group said that all Chadians who fell on the battlefield did so to satisfy the desires of an individual or small groups fighting for power. On July 17, the Mouvement pour la democratie et la justice au Chad (MDJT) said it had seized Bardai and killed 240 government troops. The government of President Idriss Deby denied Bardai had fallen and claimed its forces had killed 100 rebels. Bardai is in the extreme northwest of the country, separated by hundreds of kilometres of mainly desert from Ndjamena in the southwest. The MDJT, led by former defence and interior minister Youssouf Togoimi, has been fighting the government from its bases in the northern region of Tibesti since October 1998. Chad also has other factions, including 13 armed political groups which, in December, formed a new anti-government alliance called the Coordination of Armed and Political Opposition Movements. Human rights groups have called for a national conference on the armed forces and the judiciary, and for a similar forum on solving problems expected to come up in the future.