Lawlessness, extrajudicial killings, mutilation and burning people alive are daily occurrences in the Central African Republic, with many of the victims women, children and the elderly.
After 13 months of relentless sectarian violence that has left thousands dead, rights group Amnesty International said this week that the government and peacekeeping troops had failed to prevent the flight of tens of thousands of Muslims from the country, in what amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.
Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza, who took office in January, had “not been effective”, despite promising to make the disarmament of militia groups a priority, according to Amnesty’s crisis response adviser Joanne Mariner.
Militia groups, who effectively rule the country, seem undeterred by the presence of 1,600 French and 5,500 African Union peacekeepers.
Samba-Panza was elected after former transitional president Michel Djotodia, the country’s first Muslim president, ceded power on January 10 under pressure from regional leaders.
More than 100 witnesses of large-scale attacks told Amnesty researchers of brutal attacks on Muslim civilians in numerous towns in the north-west where no peacekeepers have been deployed.
The most deadly was on January 18 when at least 100 Muslims were killed in the town of Bossemptele, among them women and old men.
In another incident, a small boy spoke of how six members of his family - three women and three small children - were killed when Christian fighters stopped a truck at a checkpoint in the capital Bangui.
“The state has totally collapsed,” Souleymane Diabate, a UN Children’s Fund representative in CAR, told DPA. “It will take time to rebuild the administration, months, years.”
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned this week that sectarian brutality could divide the conflict-ridden nation into rival regions and urged international peacekeepers to do more to avoid “mass atrocities”.
France said yesterday it was sending 400 more troops to the Central African Republic.
After a meeting of the top French defence committee, President Francois Hollande said Paris was boosting its troop presence in the CAR to 2,000.
He also urged the European Union to speed up the deployment of its planned 500-strong EUFOR mission and vowed France would work to “stop the massacres, prevent war crimes and restore public security” in the CAR.
The most important thing is that foreign troops deployed in the country should not take sides in the conflict and protect people who are being targeted by militias.
