Amnesty highlights 180 disappearances in Casamance

The government of Senegal should bring to justice, swiftly and with impartiality those responsible for disappearances and other missing person cases in the troubled Casamance region, Amnesty International said on Thursday. According to the human rights group, between 1992 and 2001 about 180 people disappeared in Casamance, a swampy region in southern Senegal that lies between Gambia and the Guinea-Bissau border. For 22 years it has been the scene of a low intensity bush war between the Senegalese army and separatist guerrillas. Amnesty blamed about 100 of the disappearances on the army and about 80 on the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), a faction-ridden rebel movement which has been fighting for the independence of Casamance since 1981. For most of the period documented by Amnesty, President Abdou Diouf was in power. He was replaced by the current head of state, Abdoulaye Wade, in April 2000 after the opposition candidate ousted Diouf in a presidential election. "Despite a positive evolution in the last three years, impunity remains. The victims have received no justice, no moral nor financial reparation," Salvator Sagne, a Paris-based researcher of Amnesty International said in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. Amnesty highlighted the human rights situation in Casamance as it published a report which chronicled the lives of seven women in the region who had suffered as a result of the conflict. The report chronicles the lives of these women over the past two years. Two were victims of sexual violence by the rebels. Four had seen their husbands disappear after being detained by government forces and one had lost her husband to the rebels. Khady Bassene, one of the widows, said: "I cannot cash the retirement pension of my husband who disappeared after soldiers arrested him and refused to tell me what happened to him. They’re asking me for the death certificate which I cannot show." The monthly retirement allowance of 53,000 FCFA, or 80 euros, which Khady cannot cash, would help her pay rent in Ziguinchor, the largest town in Casamance.