I Coast genocide 'under way'

2004-04-13 10:04

Jacques Lhuillery

Abidjan - Ivory Coast seems more divided than ever after deadly violence that scuttled massive opposition demonstrations late last month, even as UN peacekeepers move in to steer the battered west African state back towards reconciliation.

Cracks that emerged with the September 2002 failed bid to oust President Laurent Gbagbo have widened into chasms since the March 25 surge of violence in Abidjan that opposition leaders say left as many as 500 dead.

The official death toll from "black Thursday" has been set by police at 37.

Opposition politicians had organised the demonstration to protest Gbagbo's failure to respect the terms of a January 2003 peace pact that created a unity government.

Produce

Efforts by international monitors to soothe tempers have failed to produce results, while pages and pages of newspaper ads by the national disarmament commission, trying to woo all sides with dreams of reconciliation, have been ignored.

No one in Ivory Coast - not Gbagbo's supporters, the rebels who rose against him 19 months ago, nor the political opposition - is ready to yield even an inch, choosing instead to step up the fiery rhetoric that has followed the steady degradation of the political situation.

Accusations of hypocrisy, unfettered personal ambition and double-talk were hurled last week at Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, who was installed to lead a unity government that has dwindled to a handful of pro-Gbagbo ministers, after the withdrawal of virtually the entire opposition in the wake of the March 25 debacle.

Nastiness

Such insults are met by the opposition with comparable nastiness, including denunciations of the repressive regime and accusations that the Gbagbo government is a sponsor of "genocide, massacres and butchery".

"We fervently condemn the repressive practices that have become standard under this fascist and violent government that represents only a minority in Ivory Coast," wrote former president Henri Konan Bedie. Bedie was ousted in a 1998 coup that has unleashed years of torment for the one-time regional powerhouse.

Some opposition dailies from Ivory Coast's notoriously partisan media have equated the situation in the world's top cocoa producer to the genocide in Rwanda that occurred a decade ago.

"Genocide is under way," screamed a headline on Thursday in The Patriot, a daily tied to exiled opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister who was barred from running in the 2000 elections amid long-standing questions over his parentage.

The rebels themselves have armed themselves with a new weapon: the threat of secession, which has evoked new fears among the international monitors.

"If we can manage ourselves, we will no longer need Abidjan," rebel leader Guillaume Soro said on April 4, proclaiming that his New Forces would be paying their own military's salaries, beginning this month.

- AFP