[Shadow_Group] Abidjan horrors revealed - Ivory Coast

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Some folks are calling this France's Iraq.
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Abidjan horrors revealed
12/11/2004 20:58  - (SA)   

FROM:
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1620377,00.html<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1620377,00.html>
A French citizen carrying his dog arrives by bus at
the airport of Abidjan. (Schalk van Zuydam, AP)  

Abidjan - Details of rapes and other atrocities
against foreigners in Ivory Coast began to emerge on
Friday as thousands of expatriates continued to leave
the west African state and African leaders moved to
prevent the crisis from igniting the entire region. 

The region cannot afford a reprise of the conflict in
Ivory Coast, a linchpin due to its robust, cocoa-based
economy that has attracted hundreds of thousands of
migrants over the four decades since independence from
France. 

Those responsible for the recent escalation in
violence that has claimed some 60 lives and left more
than 1 000 injured according to government tolls are
doing "incalculable damage not only to the future of
their country but to the whole of west Africa," said
UN special envoy for west Africa, Ahmedou Ould
Abdallah. 

Injuries including blows from machetes were among
incidents reported by the hundreds of French nationals
who have returned to Paris since Wednesday, when
evacuation flights began lifting off from the airport
in the commercial capital. 

Xenophobic violence 

Military officials including General Henri Poncet,
commander of the French Unicorn force in Ivory Coast,
have confirmed that foreign women were raped in the
xenophobic violence that swept through Abidjan. 

There were no murders reported among the 14 000 French
nationals who resided in Ivory Coast, foreign ministry
spokesperson Herve Ladsous said from Paris on Friday.
The whereabouts of two French nationals remain
unknown, he added. 

But the damage has been done to relations between
France and its former star colony in west Africa
following government air strikes on a French military
base in the central town of Bouake that left nine
French troops and a US aid worker dead. 

France riposted by wiping out virtually the entire
Ivorian air force and seizing the airport, which in
return provoked a violent and angry outburst by
partisans of President Laurent Gbagbo, egged on by
hate messages broadcast over state radio and
television. 

'Barriers have been breached' 

Ethnic clashes were also provoked in the southwestern
town of Gagnoa, leaving six dead including five
Burkinabe planters. 

"For the past five days, I have felt constantly ill,"
said Catherine Rechenmann, a representative of the
French community in Abidjan. 

"When people start attacking women, when they are
raped, it's over, the barriers have been breached." 

The exodus of foreign nationals gathered pace on
Friday, with Britain beginning the evacuation of some
400 people "entitled to protection" by the British
foreign office early on Friday morning, a spokesperson
told AFP from London. 

Diplomatic sources in Abidjan said the number of
flights would increase substantially to evacuate
foreign nationals from Canada, the United States,
Australia and Europe. More than 2 600 people have
boarded planes from Abidjan since Wednesday.






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