Ivory Coast rights abuses continue

“Human rights violations are still being committed against real or perceived supporters of Laurent Gbagbo both in Abidjan and in the west of the country.” Amnesty International is ringing the alarm bells and calls upon freshly inaugurated President Allasane Oauttara to stop further abuses in Ivory Coast.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

Ivory Coast is recovering from six months of deadly violence following disputed elections which left thousands of victims, their families and large sections of the population scarred and traumatised. Ouattara has vowed to combat impunity and promised to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to rebuild a shattered country.

However, against the background of Ouattara’s discourse of reconciliation and justice, attacks against Gbagbo supporters continue. Attacks on villages inhabited by people belonging to ethnic groups considered supporters of former president Laurent Gbagbo continued in the first weeks of May. Between May 6 and 8 several villages were burned and dozens of people killed. Ouattara’s Forces Républicaines de Côte d’Ivoire justified these acts by saying that they were looking for arms and Liberian mercenaries, says Amnesty International.

Ouattara’s “failure to condemn these acts could be seen as a green light by many of his security forces and other armed elements fighting with them to continue. Alassane Ouattara must publicly state that all violence against the civilian population must stop immediately,” says AI.

War crimes & crimes against humanity
Amnesty International says that forces allied to both former president Laurent Gbagbo as well as Ouattara committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The organisation’s latest report on the west African country documents testimonies from victims and witnesses to massacres, rapes and manhunts and concludes that forces loyal to both parties committed serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Amnesty gathered over 100 witness statements from people who survived the March massacres in Duékoué and neighbouring villages, in which hundreds of people were killed. Before killing them the FRCI soldiers asked their victims to give their names or show identity cards. Some of these identity cards were found beside the bodies.

The 64-page report also details the inaction of 200 UN peacekeepers, based about 1 kilometre from the main site of the killings in Duékoué. Victims say they had repeatedly requested help but received no response.

Gbagbo
Atrocities were carried out by all sides in the recent conflict. Amnesty reports that since December 2010, forces and militias loyal to Laurent Gbagbo also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including extrajudicial executions, torture and rape.

In late February Gbagbo’s forces shelled a densely populated neighbourhood of Abidjan that had come under the control of anti-Gbagbo armed elements, killing a number of people. Militias loyal to Laurent Gbagbo also burned people. The victims were mainly people with a Muslim name or wearing Muslim clothes.

Transitional Justice
Amnesty International urges the new authorities to re-establish the rule of law and fight impunity. A truth commission is not enough to deal with the legacy of abuses in Ivory Coast.

“For more than a decade, Côte d’Ivoire has been subject to amnesia and amnesties and successive governments have deliberately refused to accept their responsibility to fight impunity. This cycle must end,” said west Africa researcher Gaëtan Mootoo. She adds that “President Ouattara has committed himself to ending impunity. To avoid further revenge attacks and violence, he must fulfil this commitment.”

International Criminal Court
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have been monitoring the situation in Ivory Coast very closely. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo is likely to file a request with ICC judges soon to open investigations. He said he had “concluded that there is reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court have been committed in Côte d'Ivoire since 28 November 2010.”

Last Friday, the court in The Hague appointed a panel of judges to receive Ocampo’s request, which is expected within weeks.

In 2003 Gbagbo and recently Ouattara, have acknowledged the ICC’s power to investigate crimes in Ivory Coast, which is not a member of the court. Two weeks ago Ouattara sent a setter directly addressed to Ocampo.

He expressed his "wish" that the prosecutor's office carry out independent and impartial inquiries into the most serious crimes committed", in the entire Ivorian territory - but only since 28 November 2010.

Amnesty urges the Ivorian president to “provide full support to ongoing investigations by the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC and by the Commission of Inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council, including providing sufficient resources for them to accomplish their tasks effectively and promptly; obtain access to all relevant documents, other evidence and persons; and be in a position to protect from reprisals all persons who provide information.”

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