Students riot in Ivory Coast
2004-02-17 09:54
Abidjan - Rock-throwing students fought running street battles with police on Monday, blocking traffic with makeshift barricades and setting bonfires in protest of prison sentences imposed on three fellow militants.
The Ivory Coast Students' Federation, supporters of the Ivorian government in a recent nine-month civil war, launched its protest at the main university campus after the militants were each sentenced to four months in prison for a mugging.
Dozens of police fired teargas at hundreds of students in the middle-class district of Cocody.
Schoolchildren stayed indoors at a local French school, guarded by police and armed private security guards.
"You will have to kill us today. We aren't going to stand for this," several students shouted in unison, while hurling rocks at police.
Student leader Serge Kuyo said the protests would continue, after failed negotiations with court officials on Monday.
Recourse
"They told us that the only recourse we had was to launch an appeal, which we can't accept," said Kuyo. "We aren't going to allow this arbitrary and unjust way of proceeding."
Abidjan, Ivory Coast's commercial capital, has seen waves of youth demonstrations since a failed coup in September 2002 sparked off a civil war that has left the country divided between the rebel-held north and the loyalist south.
Up until now, most of the demonstrations have been pro-government, with violence mainly directed against the former colonial power, France, which has sent 4 000 soldiers to help keep an uneasy truce along with 1 300 West African peacekeepers.
An estimated 9 000 French expatriates have fled since war broke out in Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer and, up until the late 1990s, one of the most successful economies in West Africa.
Violent youth demonstrations last year targeted the French army base in Abidjan and French-owned businesses, fueled by accusations that France was favouring the rebels in peace negotiations and refusing to let loyalists launch an attack across an agreed ceasefire line.
Student groups have become increasingly strident in their demands since the outbreak of the war, bolstered by the central role they have assumed in rallying support for Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
- SAPA