Violence Escalates In Central African Republic; U.N. OKs Troops
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
We're going to spend a little more time now on one subject of those talks, Central African Republic. As Eleanor mentioned, yesterday the UN approved a French military operation to protect civilians there. They'll join African union forces on a mission to restore stability. CAR has descended into brutal sectarian violence between Muslim militia and Christian self defense forces.
The country's first Muslim leader came to power after a coup in March but most of the people there are Christian. Hannah McNeish reports from Bossangoa in the north of the country where thousands are seeking refuge.
HANNAH MCNEISH, BYLINE: At Bossangoa's Catholic mission, over 35,000 people are squatting in squalid conditions. Bundles of filthy rags are piled high in the seminary, and people have to pick carefully through the scant plastic sheeting and debris in a site ten times too small for their number. They have fled from armed gangs known as Seleka, which means alliance in the local Sango language. Everyone has a tale of horror. Women tell of seeing children executed, drowned or burned, and of husbands shot, hacked to death or bundled in weighted sacks and thrown in the river.
Dofio Rodriguez, one of the newest arrivals, says Seleka militants gunned down three of his relatives on the main highway leading south to the capital, Bangui, in September. A month later, he says, they slaughtered his brother at the local police station, which the Seleka gunmen are now using as a torture center.
DOFIO RODRIGUEZ: (Through translator) I saw with my own eyes, people, including my little brother, butchered at the police station. I went to see him in jail here in Bossangoa, but they'd already slit his throat and thrown him in the river.
MCNEISH: Rodriguez fled to a small gold mining village but says Seleka fighters attacked them there too, killing 30 people, including five children under five. Evodie Soumieboy was one of those who escaped. She also fled to Bossangoa's church for safety.
EVODIE SOUMIEBOY: (Through translator) The militia from the Seleka group went to the gold mining area in the evening, but we didn't know it was them until at 5 a.m. the next morning when they started shooting, killing women, kids, men, old people, everyone. There were a lot of injured people. Then they made the women carry all they looted to the main road, then told us to go back and tell our husbands they better start dancing, so we ran for our lives up to here.
MCNEISH: But it's not just Christians fleeing violence. Bossangoa's displaced mirror the nation's growing divide. Just yards from the Catholic mission is an abandoned school now home to over 1,000 Muslims who have fled reprisal attacks by largely Christian self-defense groups. The groups, calling themselves anti-balaka, or anti-machete, are armed with primitive weapons such as poisoned arrows. They are taking on the heavily armed Seleka gunmen, but have not spared Muslim civilians.
Khadija Umani is one of the only survivors of an anti-balaka attack on a truck carrying people from Bossangoa to Bangui in October.
KHADIJA UMANI: (Through translator) The anti-machete came and got us all off the truck, then they told the Muslims to stand to one side. They threw me into the bush but I watched them kill the men. They slit all seven of their throats. We had to bury them ourselves.
MCNEISH: Seleka fighters have reportedly swollen to 25,000 strong since a few thousand helped Michel Djotodia seize power. He says he no longer has any control over them. The U.N. estimates at least 400,000 people, nearly a tenth of the population, have been displaced. Rape is rampant. UNICEF says thousands of children are being forced to fight.
Senior U.N. officials have warned of a potential genocide in CAR. The country has suffered numerous coups, mutinies and conflicts since independence from France in 1960. But Muslim and Christian communities have co-existed peacefully, until now. The U.N.'s top peacekeeping official, Edmond Mulet, has called on local and international leaders to intervene, and fast, lest the conflict spread.
EDMOND MULET: This is not only a situation related to the humanitarian needs of the population. It's not only an internal conflict. But if we do not address this issue right now, this could have consequences for the whole region, therefore the whole continent.
MCNEISH: For NPR News I'm Hannah McNeish.
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