»Die Situation verlangt nach einer starken und unmittelbaren Reaktion«

Summary

“Ethnic cleansing” of Muslims has been carried out in the western part of the Central African Republic, the most populous part of the country, since early January 2014. Entire Muslim communities have been forced to flee, and hundreds of Muslim civilians who have not managed to escape have been killed by the loosely organised militias known as anti-balaka. 

“They killed my children heartlessly,” said Oure, a Muslim woman whose four sons were killed by anti-balaka fighters on 26 January. She, her two sisters, their 75-year-old mother, and seven of the family’s children had gone out early in the morning, trying to reach a church in the northwest town of Baoro, when they were caught by an anti-balaka militia unit. “The children were slaughtered in front of our eyes,” Oure continued, sobbing: “both my children and my sisters’ children.” One of Oure’s sisters, Aishatu, was wounded on her hand when she tried to protect the children, who were boys ranging in age from 8 to 17 years old. 

Amnesty International has documented large-scale and repeated anti-balaka attacks on Muslim civilian populations in Bouali, Boyali, Bossembélé, Bossemptélé, Baoro, Bawi, and the capital, Bangui, in January, and has received credible information regarding additional attacks in Yaloke, Boda, and Bocaranga. Some of these attacks were carried out in revenge for the previous killing of Christian civilians by Seleka forces and armed Muslims. 

In one of the deadliest attacks, which took place in Bossemptélé on 18 January, at least 100 Muslims were killed. Among the dead were several women and old men, including an imam in his mid-70s. Two days later, anti-balaka fighters killed four more Muslim women who had been hidden in the house of a Christian family. 

Invariably, it is civilians who have borne the brunt of the spiralling inter-communal violence. At least 200 Muslims have been killed and hundreds more injured in the anti-balaka attacks documented by Amnesty International, and large numbers of Christians were killed in reprisal attacks. In addition to causing death and destruction, attacks against Muslims have been committed with the stated intent to forcibly displace these communities from the country. Many anti-balaka fighters and their supporters maintain that Muslims are “foreigners” who should leave the country or be killed. They appear to be achieving their aims, with Muslims being forced out of the country in increasingly large numbers. 

The ethnic cleansing of Muslim communities is part of a larger tragedy unfolding in the Central African Republic. Since the mostly Muslim Seleka coalition seized power in March 2013, the country has been shattered by violence, much of it against members of the Christian community. The Seleka, which left power in mid-January 2014, killed thousands of Christian civilians, and looted and burned thousands of Christian homes. The lawless and abusive nature of their rule gave rise to unprecedented sectarian violence and hatred, with many Christians attributing responsibility for the Seleka’s abuses to the country’s Muslim minority as a whole. Their fear, anger, and desire for revenge spurred the development of the predominantly Christian anti-balaka. 

Concern over the increasingly sectarian nature of the violence in the Central African Republic led the UN Security Council in December 2013 to authorize the deployment of peacekeeping forces in the country. Those forces, now comprised of about 5,500 African Union forces (International Support Mission to Central Africa, MISCA) and 1,600 French troops (Sangaris) have deployed within Bangui as well as to several towns north and southwest of the capital. Yet they have been slow to fill the power vacuum created in mid-January when interim President Michel Djotodia resigned and the Seleka began withdrawing from these areas. 

International forces failed to swiftly deploy to these areas to protect civilians, allowing anti-balaka militias to assert themselves. In town after town, as soon as the Seleka left, the anti-balaka moved in and launched violent attacks on the Muslim minority. These developments were entirely predictable, given the deep-seated anger of both the anti-balaka and of large sectors of the Christian community, who largely held the Muslim minority responsible for Seleka abuses. Already, in December 2013, Amnesty International had warned of this danger. 

Ongoing anti-balaka attacks against Muslims and repeated threats by anti-balaka and their supporters to force the Muslim minority out of the country have caused intense and understandable fear. Convinced that no one is able or willing to protect them from future attacks, Muslims have fled broad swathes of the country en masse. Amnesty International has seen numerous towns and villages that have been emptied of their Muslim communities, or have only tiny rump populations left sheltering in and around churches and mosques, desperate to be evacuated to safety. Majority Muslim neighborhoods of Bangui, facing sustained and relentless attack, have also seen mass exodus and civilians there are also increasingly under threat. 

The urgency of the situation demands a robust and immediate response. In order to protect the remaining Muslim communities in the Central African Republic, and to prevent the violence from spreading even more broadly, international peacekeeping forces must take rapid steps to break anti-balaka control over the country’s road network, and to station sufficient troops in towns where Muslims are threatened. Given that Seleka forces have been regrouping in towns to the north and east of the capital, there are increasing concerns about the possible outbreak of sectarian violence in these areas. Non-Muslim populations, in particular, could be at risk of renewed Seleka abuses. To address these challenges, international peacekeeping troops should be granted the necessary resources to handle the country’s difficult operating environment.

The country’s new transitional authorities, as they reconstitute basic government structures and institutions, must also take steps to restore security and the rule of law. In rebuilding the police and the armed forces, the transitional government needs to take care to supplant the de facto power of lawless anti-balaka militias, not to consolidate it. Anti-balaka should, for example, be ejected from the military bases that they currently control and their numerous roadblocks and checkpoints should be removed.

The exodus of Muslims from the Central African Republic is a tragedy of historic proportions. Not only does the current pattern of ethnic cleansing do tremendous damage to the Central African Republic itself, it sets a terrible precedent for other countries in the region, many of which are already struggling with their own sectarian and inter-ethnic conflicts.

This briefing focuses on events in the western half of the Central African Republic during January and early February 2014, and is based on the findings of an Amnesty International delegation that spent two weeks investigating unlawful killings, forced displacement, destruction of homes and property, massive looting, and other serious abuses, some of which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The delegation interviewed hundreds of victims of the violence as well as many others with firsthand information.

Den vollständigen Bericht von Amnesty International finden Sie hier.