JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Anti-balaka fighters killed
at least 72 Muslim men and boys, some as young as nine, in two recent attacks
in southwestern Central African Republic, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
The assaults on Feb.1 and 5 were in the village of Guen,
in a region where abuses have been rampant, but not widely reported. Human
Rights Watch interviewed survivors who had fled to a nearby village.
In a separate attack in the southwest, armed Seleka
fighters, supported by Peuhl cattle herders, killed 19 people on Feb. 22 in the
village of Yakongo, 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Guen. Both villages are near
a main road between the larger towns of Boda and Carnot.
A cycle of tit-for-tat religious killing
rages between a Séléka rebel alliance, made up largely of Muslims, and so-called anti-balaka
forces, composed of local vigilantes, Christian defence militias and soldiers
loyal to the regime toppled by Séléka rebels.
Although French and African Union (AU) peacekeeping
forces are deployed in those larger towns, they do not regularly patrol the
road between them. Minimal help is being sent to villages in the region to
prevent attacks on civilians.
“These horrendous killings show that the French and AU
peacekeeping deployment is not protecting villages from these deadly attacks,”
Lewis Mudge, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a report
distributed by the African Press Organization.
“The Security Council shouldn’t waste another minute in
authorizing a United Nations peacekeeping mission with the troops and capacity
to protect the country’s vulnerable people.”
A Human Rights Watch researcher spent several days in
Djomo, east of Carnot, where he spoke at a Catholic mission with survivors of
the Guen attacks. Lacking any humanitarian support, these victims – all
Muslims, and mostly the elderly, women, and children – had sought refuge at the
mission, where, even there, the anti-balaka continued to assault them.
The anti-balaka militias rose up across the country to
fight the Seleka, a predominantly Muslim coalition that took control of the
capital, Bangui, on March 24, 2013.
The anti-balaka quickly began to target Muslim civilians,
particularly in the west, equating them with Seleka or the coalition’s
sympathizers. While some anti-balaka possess heavy arms, the majority of the
fighters in the southwest are poorly armed with either homemade hunting
shotguns or machetes. The anti-balaka often kill their victims with machetes.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that anti-balaka forces
from the north entered Guen in the early morning of Feb 1. They set upon the
Muslim neighborhood of the town and immediately started to shoot people as they
fled.
A widow in Guen told Human Rights Watch: “My husband ran
away with our four-and-a-half year old son … but he [the husband] was shot in
the stomach. I ran and took our child, and the anti-balaka fell upon him [my
husband] with their machetes. I wanted to stay with my husband, but my brother
pulled me away into the bush.” The child survived.
The anti-balaka did not spare children in the Feb. 1
attack. The father of 10-year-old Oumarou Bouba told Human Rights Watch: “I
took my son when the anti-balaka attacked. As we were running away, he was shot
by the anti-balaka. He was shot in the right leg and he fell down, but they
finished him off with a machete. I had no choice but to run on. I had been shot
too. I later went to see his body and he had been struck in his head and in the
neck.”
On Feb. 5, after looting Guen’s Muslim neighborhoods, the
anti-balaka attacked a property where hundreds of Muslims had sought refuge. In
this attack, the anti-balaka divided approximately 45 men into two groups, led
them out of the compound, forced them to lie on the ground, and executed them.
The anti-balaka spared women, small children, and the wounded.
One man who had managed to hide among the wounded told
Human Rights Watch: “They divided the men into two groups and shot them. Then
they cut them with machetes. There was nothing the victims could do; they were
killed like wild dogs. They lay there and they were shot.”
The attack on Guen occurred in a context of widespread
insecurity in the southwest, particularly on the road between Boda and Carnot,
where the Seleka and allied Peuhl fighters attacked the village of Yakongo on
Feb. 22.
“The massacres in the southwest demonstrate the utter
lawlessness of both the anti-balaka and the Seleka,” Mudge said. “Both the
government and the peacekeepers need to act quickly and effectively to protect
civilians, promote security, and enforce the rule of law.”
The transitional government of President Catherine
Samba-Panza should investigate these killings and hold to account the attackers
and those orchestrating the violence. The international community should also
improve the protection for civilians and fast-track the authorization and
deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.
On April 1, the European Union confirmed it would send 1,000
peacekeepers to the Central African Republic to provide support to the AU and
an eventual UN mission. These peacekeepers should be deployed as soon as
possible.
- By Gary Rawlins
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