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Troops in 'worst atrocities'
15/09/2007 22:27 - (SA)
New York - Government troops have been responsible for the worst atrocities of a simmering conflict in Central African Republic, burning down villages, executing civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, a human rights group said.
An elite presidential guard unit based in the northern town of Bossangoa has been behind nearly all of the burnings and many of the killings, including the beheading of a teacher and the deaths of 30 civilians in one day last year, New York-based Human Right Watch said in a report on Friday.
"Troops arrive in villages and indiscriminately fire into the civilian population, forcing them to flee before burning down their homes, sometimes looting them first," the report said. "In some places, every single home in every single village was burned."
The US-based rights group's researchers visited most of the towns and villages affected in February and March 2007, interviewing victims, government officials, military commanders and rebel officials.
Central African Republic, a desperately poor landlocked country, has suffered decades of coups and rebellions since gaining independence from France in 1960. In the past year, government forces have been fighting rebellions in the northwest and separately in the northeast near the borders with Chad and Sudan's Darfur region.
Most of the government attacks appeared to be "unlawful reprisals against" civilians following rebel activity in an area, Human Rights Watch said. The report said researchers documented 119 unlawful killings by government forces, mostly in the northwest of the country. However, those killings were probably "only a fraction of the total" committed by government forces, it said.
Abuses by rebel forces widespread
The government's tactics have affected more than 1 million people and forced an estimated 212 000 civilians to flee their homes for the bush, the report said.
Abuses by rebel forces have also been widespread, although "not on a scale comparable to government forces," Human Rights Watch said.
The Popular Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy, or APRD, have engaged in extortion, taxation, looting and kidnapping for ransom to fund their rebellion in the northwest, the report said. In the northeast, the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity has carried out summary executions and widespread looting of the civilian population.
Regional experts have warned that conflicts in neighboring Sudan and Chad appear to be spilling over the border into Central African Republic and possibly contributing to rebel movements.
However, Human Rights Watch said its research "suggests that the degree of linkage with the situation in Darfur has been exaggerated". It said the APRD is "so poorly equipped that it is difficult to imagine that it has foreign sponsorship".
The UFDR has had some contact with Sudan-sponsored Chadian rebels in the northeast, the report said. But the conflict there is "largely homegrown," mostly due to dissatisfaction with President Francois Bozize, who seized power in a 2003 coup and was elected in a disputed 2005 vote.
Earlier this year, Bozize acknowledged "there have been some serious lapses in behavior during military operations" but said he was trying to prevent his forces from targeting civilians.
Human Rights Watch said no government soldier or officer had been held accountable for the abuses. It called on France, which recently added 100 troops to its 200 soldiers in the country to aid the government in countering the rebellion, "to speak out about the army abuses".
A 3 000-strong European Union mission has been proposed to protect Sudanese refugees and other civilians affected by fighting in Chad and Central African Republic.
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