WUNRN
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/12/22/central-african-republic-muslims-trapped-enclaves
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC – MUSLIMS TRAPPED IN ENCLAVES – HIGH RISK FOR ATTACKS BY MILITANTS + HUNGER & DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS - MUSLIM WOMEN
Displacement site at Yaloké, Central
African republic,, where 509 ethnic Peuhl Muslims are housed in government
buildings in the town center in deplorable conditions. © 2014 Zoe Flood for
Human Rights Watch
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http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/trapped-car/
Central African Republic – A Slow Starvation of Isolated Muslims – See Emaciated Children
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/12/22/central-african-republic-muslims-trapped-enclaves
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC – MUSLIMS TRAPPED, HIGH RISK FOR SAFETY, HUNGER,
SURVIVAL NEEDS – WOMEN & CHILDREN
December
22, 2014 - (Nairobi) – Hundreds of Muslim residents in western parts of the Central African Republic are trapped in
enclaves in deplorable conditions, Human Rights Watch said today. They fear
attacks if they leave, but interim government authorities and United Nations
peacekeepers block them from fleeing abroad or provide no security assistance
when they try to leave.
“Those trapped in some of the enclaves face a grim choice: leave and face
possible attack from anti-balaka fighters, or stay and die from hunger and
disease,” said Lewis Mudge, Africa researcher at Human Rights
Watch. “While there are good reasons to ensure that the country’s Muslim
population does not diminish further, under the current circumstances, the
government’s policy of no evacuations is absolutely indefensible.”
UN
peacekeepers should not be complicit in preventing Muslims from leaving to seek
safety, Human Rights Watch said.
Camp leaders in the western Muslim enclaves of Yaloké, Carnot, and Boda told
Human Rights Watch during a research mission from December 7 to14, 2014, that
an estimated 1,750 Muslims, many of them ethnic Peuhl herders, are desperate to
leave.
They say that many are trapped in places where they never lived, that they are
unable to leave for fear of the anti-balaka fighters, who have been attacking
the country’s Muslims, and that the UN peacekeeping force, MINUSCA, is not
authorized to help them seek safety. In the Yaloké enclave, UN peacekeepers have
repeatedly used force to stop Muslims from leaving.
The vast majority of Muslims in western parts of the country fled brutal
attacks by Christian and animist anti-balaka militia in late 2013 and early
2014. Those who were not able to reach Cameroon or Chad became trapped in the
enclaves, where they have spent months living in difficult conditions. UN
officials, as well as African Union (AU) MISCA and French Sangaris peacekeepers
supported evacuations in late 2013 and early 2014, helping thousands of Muslims
to seek safety, including in Cameroon. The Chadian army also evacuated
thousands of Muslims.
But in April when UN humanitarian agencies, together with French and AU
peacekeepers, finally agreed, after considerable international pressure, to
evacuate besieged Muslims from PK12, a district in Bangui, transitional
authorities were outraged. They said they had not given approval and opposed
any further evacuations without their consent.
Human Rights Watch met with government authorities, diplomats, and humanitarian
agency representatives who said the interim government did not wish more Muslim
residents to flee the country for fear of being seen as assisting ethnic
cleansing. Pirette Benguele, the sub-prefect, the top administrative official
of Yaloké, told Human Rights Watch in December: “We cannot accept that the
Peuhl are evacuated. This is a political crisis and we need them to stay … so
we can begin reconciliation with them.”
Officials at the UN’s Department of Peace Keeping Operations told Human Rights
Watch on December 20 that the UN is strongly urging transitional authorities to
support further transfers of those who wish to leave.
Since the April decision, international peacekeepers from both the AU forces
and replacement UN forces deployed in September have prevented Muslims from
leaving the Yaloké enclave, where 509 ethnic Peuhl are housed in dilapidated
government buildings in the town center. The peacekeepers have used physical
force and intimidation to stop Muslims from getting on the commercial convoys –
usually dozens of trucks heading to Cameroon – that stop 100 feet from the
enclave twice a week. UN peacekeepers provide military escorts to the convoys
to deter attacks from the anti-balaka and other bandits.
Camp officials told Human Rights Watch they saw the convoys as their best, and
only safe, way to reach Cameroon as they do not have other access to vehicles
and the truck drivers do not object. In June Human Rights Watch reported that
AU peacekeepers had threatened to shoot Peuhl trying to board a commercial
convoy for Cameroon.
In December, a 55-year-old woman from Mbaďki told Human Rights Watch: “We want
only to go to Cameroon. I have a son there.… We have tried to leave with our
things many times, but the answer from MINUSCA is always no. We have tried at
least 12 times to leave, but each time they pulled me off the trucks.”
The UN commanding officer in Yaloké confirmed that his forces removed Muslims
from the trucks, saying that when they are told about Peuhl who “try to sneak
into the convoy, we take them out and put them back into the site.”
UN peacekeeping officials in Bangui, the capital, and representatives of the UN
special representative of the secretary general for MINUSCA, visited the site
in Yaloké in December. Peuhl living there informed the delegations that they
wanted to leave but were being blocked by the peacekeepers. International law
grants everyone the right “to leave any country, including his own” and to seek
asylum abroad. Muslims in the enclaves also have the right to freedom of
movement in their own country.
“Using force to keep threatened Muslims in the Yaloké enclave from fleeing to
safety is contrary to everything the UN stands for,” Mudge said. “UN
peacekeepers shouldn’t play any part in a government policy that violates the
rights of Muslims to seek safety and condemns them to deadly conditions in the
enclaves.”
Those trapped in Yaloké face abysmal conditions with unacceptable and growing
numbers of avoidable deaths. Since February, camp representatives have recorded
the deaths of 42 Peuhl, many of them children, from malnutrition and
respiratory and other diseases. Health professionals at the local hospital said
the death rate amongst the Peuhl is significantly higher than Yaloké’s other
residents. In the same six-month period that hospital staff recorded the deaths
of 13 children from the enclave, only one local child died. The Peuhl have
received some humanitarian assistance, but it is neither appropriate nor
regular enough to stop growing levels of malnutrition.
On December 9, after visiting the Yaloké site, the World Health Organization
(WHO) and UNICEF issued a report describing the deplorable conditions and
called for an “evacuation of all [displaced] Peuhls from Yaloké.”
In the enclaves of Carnot, Berbérati, and the Muslim neighborhood in Boda,
living conditions are less life-threatening, but hundreds of Muslims still
express a desire to leave. UN peacekeepers at these sites do not block the
Muslims from leaving on foot, but Muslims say they fear anti-balaka attacks and
need the peacekeepers’ help to reach safety. Often out of desperation, many
Muslims have left Carnot and Berbérati by organizing their own transport. The
two enclaves are off the main road to Cameroon, and no regular convoys pass.
Some have made it to Cameroon or other places of safety; others have
not.
In late November a Peuhl man was viciously attacked by the anti-balaka when he
tried to leave Carnot at night with his wife to find their children, whom they
believed were in Cameroon. The attackers tried to cut off his hand, broke the
bones of his feet with machetes, and the next morning slit his throat, killing
him.
In Berbérati, on September 19, a group of men attacked Harouna Rachid Mamouda,
an Imam, when he left the Catholic parish to drop off a letter. His attackers
were discussing lynching him when local gendarme and UN peacekeepers rescued
him.
“Muslim residents are left with the awful choice of living in desperate
conditions in the enclaves or running the gauntlet of trying to reach Cameroon
on their own,” Mudge said. “The transitional government should work with UN
officials to help Muslims who want to leave and to substantially improve
conditions for those who decide to remain.”
The Crisis in Central African
Republic
The Central African Republic has been in acute crisis since early 2013, when
the mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in a campaign characterized
by widespread killing of civilians, burning and looting of homes, and other
serious crimes. In mid-2013, groups calling themselves the
anti-balaka organized to fight against the Seleka. The anti-balaka began
committing large-scale reprisal attacks against Muslim civilians
in Bangui and western parts of the country.
Establishment of the Enclaves
In the face of the attacks and military pressure from French peacekeeping
forces, the Seleka withdrew from western areas, leaving Muslims at the mercy of
the anti-balaka. Tens of thousands of Muslims fled for their lives, to Cameroon
or other areas of the country. Thousands found safety at Catholic parishes,
military bases of AU and French peacekeepers, and in Muslim neighborhoods. By
December 2014, an estimated 415,000 people, most of them Muslim, had fled the
country and another 10,500 were protected by peacekeepers in a handful of
western enclaves – Carnot, Yaloké, Boda, and Berbérati, among others. In
Bangui, Muslims also gathered together against attack.
Many Muslims civilians faced extreme violence before arriving to the enclaves,
and thousands died. In Carnot, in February, the anti-balaka killed at least 110
Muslim civilians in the days following the Seleka’s departure, according to
Human Rights Watch research and information from local Muslim leaders.
Many tried to run to the Catholic parish, where AU peacekeepers had a base, but
some could not and hid in their homes or homes of friends. In a prominent
diamond merchant’s home, 13 men hid from the anti-balaka for nine days, with
little or no food. On the tenth day, about 20 anti-balaka attacked, a witness
said. Some of the men scrambled into the ceiling to hide, but the anti-balaka
found them and tied them together. The attackers tried to ransom six of the
victims and executed the other seven.
Anti-balaka fighters also killed at least 72 Muslim men and boys, some as young
as 9, in two attacks in Guen, in the southwest, on
February 1 and 5. During the second attack, the anti-balaka attacked a property
where hundreds of Muslims had sought refuge. They divided approximately 45 men
into two groups, led them out of the compound, forced them to lie on the
ground, and executed them.
Anti-balaka also attacked ethnic Peuhl relentlessly as they fled western towns.
The Peuhl are a Muslim ethnic minority who traditionally live as nomads with
large cattle herds. Before the conflict they were estimated to number at about
300,000 – less than 1 percent of Central African Republic’s 4.5 million
citizens. Scattered across the western region, groups of Peuhl tried to escape
to Cameroon or make their way to the enclaves, desperately trying to keep their
cattle – their livelihoods – with them. Their journeys were dangerous and
difficult.
Maimouna Aldou, a Peuhl who fled the town of Zawa, 20 kilometers from Yaloké,
described to Human Rights Watch in March how anti-balaka killed her husband and
two sons the day after they left:
My
husband Mumarou Dougo and son Aliou were killed on the way. I also lost my
4-year-old son, Mamadou. He was on my back and he was breathing badly and I put
him down to search for water. But the anti-balaka surprised us and I covered
him with a cloth. I was captured and the anti-balaka said to me, ‘If it’s a
girl you can keep her, but if it is a boy, leave him and we will kill him.’ I
don’t know if they buried my son.
Together
with four Peuhl men, she was taken to the village of Dingiri. After a week, “The
anti-balaka leader came back and said, ‘Why are you keeping these Peuhl here?’ The
men were taken away and killed,” she said. According to the witnesses, the men
were “Oumarou Arto, Abdoulai Maloume, Saidou, and Aladji Toguel.”
Many Peuhl mothers described how their children died after weeks or months of
desperate walking to seek safety. Astah Adamou, 15, from Zawa, said that
anti-balaka killed her brother, Aliou Gibril, outside Dingiri. She escaped and
after months of walking, finally arrived at the Carnot enclave with her
8-month-old daughter, Fadimatou. Her daughter died the next day. “Before we
left she was a strong baby,” Adamou said. “But she got weaker and weaker on the
way.”
Seleka also killed civilians as they fled, including around Carnot. Sometimes
the Seleka joined armed Peuhl herders attempting to move their cattle through
the region. Together these groups attacked civilians suspected of sheltering
anti-balaka fighters.
Evacuations of Muslims
The brutal violence and threats that Muslims faced led AU and French
peacekeepers, as well as Chadian authorities, to organize evacuations of
Muslims to Cameroon and other places of safety in early 2014. A local leader
from Carnot said:
In the
beginning of the violence, the Cameroonian soldiers said they would evacuate
anyone from Cameroon who had valid identification. They asked me to make a
list. But when they brought the truck to take people it was chaos and everyone
jumped on board. The AU captain finally just said, ‘Ok, everyone get on!’ That
is how the evacuations were managed.
Chadian
authorities also evacuated thousands of Muslims trapped in Muslim neighborhoods
in Bangui, amongst other locations. By March, the population of Bangui’s Muslim
PK12 neighborhood decreased from 10,000 to 2,400.
Government Decision to Halt
Evacuations
On April 27, after considerable international pressure, UN officials helped
organize the evacuation of 1,300 Muslims from the PK12 neighborhood under the
protection of AU peacekeepers. Interim authorities were outraged and said they
had not approved the evacuation and insisted there be no further evacuations
without government consent. Halfway through the three day journey to northern
parts of the country, anti-balaka attacked the convoy, killing two Muslims and
wounding several others.
One senior UN official told Human Rights Watch in December, “The interim
government is still upset about [the] PK12 [evacuation] and does not want to be
blamed if something else goes wrong.”
Since April, there have been no organized evacuations of Muslims from the
enclaves. Human Rights Watch met with local authorities from the transitional
government, diplomats, and humanitarian agency representatives who said that
the government’s refusal to allow Muslims to leave was based on the political
calculation of not being seen abetting ethnic cleansing.
UN Peacekeepers Stop Muslims
From Leaving
Since the transitional government’s decision to halt evacuations of Muslims,
AU, and since September UN, peacekeepers have prevented Muslims from leaving
the Yaloké enclave on commercial convoys.
Twice a week, dozens of commercial trucks pass through Yaloké heading for
Cameroon, passing less than 100 feet from the enclave. The convoys provide
essential supplies to Bangui and are critical to economic stability in the
capital. Heavily armed UN peacekeepers escort the convoys to deter anti-balaka
attacks. These convoys are the only way for the Muslims to leave Yaloké, apart
from on foot, as they have no other access to vehicles.
Muslims trapped in Yaloké said they see the convoys as their best, and safest,
route to Cameroon, where many have family members in the refugee camps. But UN
peacekeepers stop the Peuhl from boarding the trucks, often using force and
intimidation, or remove Peuhl from trucks they boarded.
During a visit to the Yaloké enclave in May, Human Rights Watch researchers witnessed an AU (MISCA) captain openly
threatening Peuhl civilians, vowing to shoot anyone who tried to board a
convoy. After Human Rights Watch protested, the captain said he was “only
trying to scare [the Peuhl].” But he insisted he would not allow them to board
the trucks, saying the country’s transitional authorities firmly opposed any
further departure of Muslims from the country.
In October, during a visit to the refugee camps in Cameroon, Human Rights Watch met some Peuhl
who said they had boarded a commercial convoy after paying AU peacekeepers to
look the other way.
UN peacekeepers in Yaloké maintain that they are refusing to allow Peuhl to
leave at the behest of transitional authorities. The commanding officer in
Yaloké told Human Rights Watch in December:
The
government has decided not to free the Peuhl so they can go to the border. They
feel that those at the site must stay there and nongovernmental organizations
will come to help them.… We do stop them when they try to join a convoy [to
leave]. If they leave without permission from the sub-prefecture, it means that
we are an accomplice if they are attacked by the anti-balaka.
This
reflects what appears to be a general policy maintained and enforced by the UN
peacekeepers, notwithstanding that when officials from MINUSCA and
representatives of the UN special representative of the secretary general visited
the site in Yaloké, they heard from Peuhl there that they wanted to leave but
were being blocked by the peacekeepers.
Peacekeepers do not prevent the Peuhl in Yaloké from leaving on foot, but the
Peuhl have a limited range of movement as they are frequently insulted,
threatened, or attacked. Peuhl are able to move freely in about a 400-meter
radius around the enclave, such as to go to the health clinic or the water
source, but any longer journeys can be perilous.
International law grants everyone the right “to leave any country, including
his own” and to seek asylum abroad. Muslims in the enclaves also have the right
to freedom of movement in their own country. The restrictions the transitional
authorities placed on the voluntary movement of threatened Muslim communities
are inconsistent with these international legal obligations, and point to the
need for a more durable approach to ensuring the security of Muslim residents.
In Carnot, Berbérati, and Boda, where no regular convoys pass by, UN peacekeepers
do not block the Muslims from leaving on foot. A number of Muslims say they
wish to stay in these enclaves, especially in Boda, where local reconciliation
efforts appear to have reduced tensions between Muslims and Christians. But
others still wish to leave.
Those who want to leave can only do so by organizing their own transport or a
days-long arduous walk to the border. The key deterrent is the persistent
threat of anti-balaka attack. Muslims who wish to leave these enclaves say they
desperately need peacekeepers’ help to reach safety.
Despite the risks, many Muslims have left Carnot, Boda, and Berbérati. Some
have made it to Cameroon or other places of safety; others have not.
Dire Conditions in the Yaloké
Enclave
The situation in the Yaloké enclave is particularly alarming. Not only are
Puehl stopped from leaving on commercial convoys, but they also face desperate
and life-threatening conditions if they stay. Since February, camp
representatives have recorded the deaths of 42 Peuhl, the majority children,
from malnutrition and respiratory and other diseases. Health professionals in
Yaloké said the death rate among the Peuhl was significantly higher than
Yaloké’s other residents. In the same six-month period that hospital staff
recorded the deaths of 13 children from the enclave, only one local child died
amongst a much larger population.
In December, when Human Rights watch visited Yaloké, camp leaders described a
high rate of tuberculosis, lack of medication, unreliable food assistance, and
cramped living conditions, with people forced to sleep outside. Their problems
are compounded by a lack of firewood and potable water since women who often
gather such essential supplies are routinely threatened and insulted by local
people when they leave the enclave.
The Peuhl are housed in five dilapidated government buildings on a hillside
near the center of town. One building, with four small rooms, houses 45 people.
Many are forced to sleep on the ground and in the open. Salamtu, 25, said in
December: “Look how we live here. We sleep on the ground and we all get sick.”
Food
support at Yaloké is coordinated via the World Food Program. Muslims say food
distributions come every four to six weeks, but in sporadic quantities. A
greater problem, they say, is that the food does not meet their cultural and
nutritional requirements. The Peuhl live largely on a diet of meat and milk and
are not used to the rice and beans humanitarian agencies distribute.
One 45-year-old woman said: “We are sick because of a lack of milk. It is a
nutritional problem. We cannot lie and say that we are not given food here, but
we are not used to this food.”
From December 2 to 4, a joint team of experts from UNICEF and the WHO visited
Yaloké to assess the health and nutritional situation. They reported that the
Peuhl at the site “have not benefited from an appropriate humanitarian
assistance since … May 2014.” They noted that the “alarming deterioration of
their health had been the subject of previous missions.”
The team’s principal recommendation was for the “evacuation of all [displaced]
Peuls from Yaloké to a secure place where they can move freely and where each
one will find human dignity.”
The team also called for immediate assistance to the Peuhls in Yaloké with: “food
support, regular in quantity and quality, taking into account eating habits of
Peuhls; shelter for each family; medical-nutritional care for the malnourished;
permanent effective and free health care; and assistance with non-food items
such as water storage, hygiene items, protection against the cold, etc.”
Despite Yaloké’s proximity to the capital – 180 kilometres on a paved road – and
UN officials’ recognition of the dire situation in the enclave, the UN’s
humanitarian response has been minimal. Humanitarian workers told Human Rights
Watch that “Yaloké seems to have been forgotten.”
Attacks on Muslims
Muslims face persistent threats when they leave the enclaves, even for short
periods. The difficult security situation and the limited capacity of
international and local security forces make it difficult to offer effective
protection in remote areas.
During the December visit to Yaloké, Carnot, Berberati, and Boda, victims and
witnesses reported numerous recent killings and attacks.
In late November, a Peuhl man and his wife tried to leave Carnot. The wife
later said:
My
husband and I were here at the site, we had been here for 4 months. We were
separated from our kids and we did not know where they were, so we left for
Cameroon to try to find them…. We left the site here in Carnot on foot at
night. We left at night because we did not want the anti-balaka to find us.… But
the next night they did. They attacked my husband and cut his arms and feet
with machetes. When they cut his arm they were trying to cut his hand off … they
broke the bones of his feet. My husband stayed alive until the next morning
when they found him alive and slit his throat. When they killed him, we fled
into the bush.
On
November 25 a man suspected by the anti-balaka of being a Seleka fighter left
the Carnot enclave for a brief visit to the town center. Anti-balaka captured
and lynched him near the market, beating him to death with clubs and knives
before UN peacekeepers arrived.
Anti-balaka attack Muslims who have not yet made it to Cameroon, Chad, or the
relative safety of an enclave. In July, anti-balaka captured 34 Peuhl herders
near Ngbaina as they tried to reach Cameroon with their cattle. The anti-balaka
beat them, stole their cattle, and threatened to kill them if they did not pay
US$3,750 ransom. The group was told that if they paid, the anti-balaka would
help them reach Cameroon. Three months later, they were released when relatives
in Cameroon organized to pay a reduced ransom. Instead of taking them to
Cameroon, the anti-balaka took them to the nearby Yaloké enclave.
The anti-balaka kept one member of the group, Yao, who is about 25, to watch
over the stolen cows. A witness told Human Rights Watch: “Yao was taken by
force, he wanted to remain with his family, but the anti-balaka refused to let
him. The anti-balaka told him, ‘If you try to flee, then we will kill you.’” Yao
has not been released.
The same fighters in Ngbaina are holding another 14 Peuhl, mostly women and
children. Witnesses who spoke to the women said the anti-balaka had killed
their husbands and were demanding a ransom for their release. The witnesses
said the captors regularly beat and slapped the women and girls. Unable to pay,
the women and children were still in captivity when Human Rights Watch visited
the area on December 11.
Other witnesses interviewed in December indicated that anti-balaka were holding
another group of about10 Peuhl civilians in Pondo, a village on the same road
as Ngbaina.
Neither international nor national security forces had intervened to rescue
those kidnapped or held hostage.