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I Coast returning to normal
17/11/2004 10:29 - (SA)
United Nations - Radio and television messages that stirred up mob anger against foreigners in Ivory Coast have given way to calls urging people to keep calm and get back to work, a United Nations spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The United Nations had feared the hate messages - which included images of people purportedly wounded in clashes with French troops - would lead to widespread violence and possibly even genocide in the West African nation.
Mobs have rioted across Ivory Coast since former colonial ruler France destroyed the country's air force on November 6, after Ivorian jets bombed a French base, killing nine soldiers and an American.
Two days before, Ivory Coast's government shattered a cease-fire with northern rebels by bombing a town under their control.
Abidjan mostly calm
The violence forced the evacuation of more than 5 000 Westerners. More than 10 000 African nationals fled to neighbouring countries.
But messages denouncing France have stopped airing, and the country's commercial capital, Abidjan, is mostly calm, UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said. He said more UN peacekeepers had been moved to Abidjan, easing tensions.
"National radio and television have been airing peace messages significantly different in tone and content to the ones we have been hearing of late," Eckhard said. He said the new messages urged the crowds to "exercise restraint" and go back to work.
"Commercial activities have resumed and life seems to be returning to its normal pace," he said.
The messages resembled radio broadcasts that exhorted people to join in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where more than 500 000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in about three months.
The top UN adviser on preventing genocide, Juan Mendez, had urged Ivory Coast's government on Monday to condemn the hate messages, and warned that if the practice continued he would recommend UN peacekeepers intervene to protect civilians.
About 6 000 UN peacekeepers and 4 000 French troops are deployed in Ivory Coast to try to monitor and promote peace in the wake of a civil war begun in September 2002.
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