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Africans flee to Europe
15/11/2004 15:00 - (SA)
Abidjan - Ivorians and other Africans with dual nationality have joined the exodus of foreigners from Ivory coast, where hardline backers of President Laurent Gbagbo have been terrorising Westerners for the past week.
"I have lost all hope for a normal family life in Ivory Coast," explained Franco-Ivorian dual national Parfait late on Sunday as he waited for a bus to take him from a French military base near Abidjan to the city's international airport for an evacuation flight.
The French base has been serving since last week as a registration point and holding station for anyone - mostly French nationals - wishing to leave Ivory Coast after the country's low-level civil war flared up suddenly last week.
The Dutch and Swedish ambassadors to Ivory Coast were among those to seek shelter at the French base, which has so far organised the evacuation of more than 5 000 foreigners.
What sparked the mass exodus was a series of attacks on positions in the north held by rebels who failed two years ago in an attempt to oust Gbagbo, plunging the country into civil war. 'Dark skin'
"I don't feel threatened, but given that the French high school was completely burnt to the ground, my daughter has nowhere to go to school," said Noelie, an Ivorian woman married to a Frenchman.
In the past week of violence in Ivory Coast, having dark skin has not been a guarantee of immunity from the exactions of the rioting mobs.
Sitting on a bench, a tall, slender, olive-skinned woman from Mauritius, who is married to a European, recalled how she was stricken with fear when, on November 6, the day the pogroms began, a group of marauding Ivorian youths tried to break into her home.
"You need only to have skin that is lighter than usual and you're considered a white person" by the "Young Patriots", the extremist backers of Gbagbo who sowed terror among the expatriate community in Ivory Coast last week, said the Mauritian, who asked not to be named.
"In the midst of the melee, no one looks for differences between blacks and people of mixed race," said a French-Ivorian who requested anonymity. 'To each his white'
"Under normal circumstances, my children are called Negroes, but today they're considered whites. 'To each his white'" - the battlecry of the Young Patriots - "is as valid for half-whites as it is for 100% whites," he said.
Although he has chosen to stay in Ivory Coast, his mixed-race wife is leaving and taking the couple's children to safety in France.
Being black does not guarantee immunity from the wave of hatred that is ripping out the heart of Ivory Coast, said Parfait.
"I drove around in town where they (the Young Patriots) look for signs that you're French. At one roadblock, when they saw my French driving licence, they got very worked up," he said.
- AFP
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