Armed hold-ups, car-jackings on rise amid economic woes

Armed hold-ups and car-nabbings are mushrooming across Benin, where increasing food and oil prices in one of the world’s poorest countries are making economic survival increasingly tough. Citizens are frightened and crying out for better security as criminal violence seeps into the economic heart of the country, the capital, Cotonou, and more and more innocent passers-by are gunned down in broad daylight. On 17 October two people were killed and four injured by armed robbers who snatched a briefcase stuffed with banknotes from a major store in a commercial center at rush hour. The robbers got away. “What shocked us most was that it took police a long time to show up,” said a resident of the area, Joseph Ogoungnon, echoing a chorus of complaints about a lack of police response. A frail economy is largely to blame for a hike in crime in this small West African country, analysts say. Given recent financial blows like a 25-percent hike bread prices in September and a near one-third jump in the price of petrol smuggled from neighbouring Nigeria, the leap in crime is hardly surprising, sociologist Jean-Luc Kuassi said. “Nothing works nowadays in this country,” he told IRIN. “Trade networks are crumbling, the young people are in the streets, there hasn’t been enough rain, everyone’s asking for help. Everything is too expensive.” Kuassi said staple foods, including corn, have tripled in price. “Some people have resorted to crime in despair,” Kuassi said. The Economist Intelligence Unit expects Benin’s inflation to average 5 percent in 2005, provided food prices ease after the main harvest. Crime and unemployment figures are unavailable in this country of 7.5 million people, where life expectancy is 52 and a third of the population is illiterate and lives below the poverty line. But the level of violence appears to be on the rise and offenders bolder in their conquests. On 25 September the mayor of the central town of Toffo was seriously hurt when a group of men held him up and stole his 4x4 vehicle. The mayor died of his injuries three days later. National government officials are not immune to the crime wave. The forestry commission had one of its vehicles nabbed near a major police station, an accountant was gunned down and his vehicle snatched 200 yards from the presidency and assailants even tried – but failed – to attack the home of the president of the Constitutional Court, Conceptia Ouinsou. Meanwhile, packs of purse-snatchers, pickpockets and muggers are on the loose in Cotonou, causing mayhem among pedestrians and passengers of the city’s popular motorbike-taxis. Police chief Abassi Alle told IRIN he blamed the spiral of violence on the country’s porous border with Nigeria. “The gangsters operate on both sides of the border, hitting on one side and taking shelter on the other,” he said. “Often they work in organised networks set up on both sides of the border.” Last January, the two governments launched joint patrols in an effort to tackle cross-border crime. Alle said there is little evidence of similar collusion along Benin’s other borders, with Togo, Burkina Faso or Niger. Highway banditry, which has forced drivers to travel in armed convoys on Benin’s main road north, also continues to be a problem. Following a spate of deadly attacks on the central stretch of the road last year, gunmen operating on the section from Cotonou to Niger held up a taxi in May, stripping passengers of cash and jewellery and slitting the throat of a woman passenger who tried to resist. Traders and others who must travel Benin’s roads for a living are terrified and incensed, saying police and paramilitary gendarmes do not have the means to ensure citizens’ protection. “We’re no longer safe on our own roads,” trader Sabine Gansou said. “Some bandits steal and then rape the women. It’s horrid. This has been going on for a while and although the police and gendarmes try to help they don’t have the material or human means necessary.” At the offices of the paramilitary gendarmes, Brigade Chief Clotaire Dourodjaye said his unit had hoped to escort vehicles in a convoy from one town to the next. “But we don’t have the vehicles or the fuel so we have to simply ride aboard one of the private cars,” he said. Given the deterioration in law and order, Minister of State for Defence Pierre Osho said earlier this year that he had decided to call the army in to help. “Military operations will be launched without warning across the country to apprehend, neutralise and stop individuals or groups of individuals, who are acting suspiciously and carrying weapons of war or hunting weapons, whether they be in the forest on the roads,” he said.