* Ivory Coast launched arrests in wake of attacks
* Ethnic groups allied to former president targeted – report
By Joe Bavier
ABIDJAN, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Hundreds of civilians suspected
of backing Ivory Coast’s former president have been swept up in
mass arrests and abused by the army, dealing a major setback to
efforts to heal divisions after a decade of crisis, Human Rights
Watch said on Monday.
Years of political deadlock in Ivory Coast ended in a brief
post-election civil war last year, caused by President Laurent
Gbagbo’s refusal to accept his defeat at the polls.
Gbagbo is now in The Hague charged with crimes against
humanity. But a wave of raids on security installations,
beginning in August and blamed on his exiled supporters, has
revived the spectre of violence and provoked a heavy-handed
response from the army.
“At a time when the country remains deeply divided along
political and ethnic lines, the military’s actions pose a
dangerous risk in terms of further alienating Gbagbo
supporters,” Human Rights Watch said in a report.
The government of President Alassane Ouattara, who won a
run-off against Gbagbo, rejected the accusation of mass arrests.
“It was on the basis of a body of evidence and often after
denunciation that these people were arrested as part of an
investigation,” Gnenema Coulibaly, Ivory Coast’s minister of
human rights, said in a written response to the report.
The investigation by Human Rights Watch documented
systematic mass round-ups in restaurants, at bus stops and in
private homes of young men from ethnic groups perceived to
support Gbagbo.
Detainees were often beaten, robbed, held in overcrowded
cells in illegal detention facilities, given little to eat or
drink, and deprived of contact with their families, the report
said.
Ivory Coast’s government has promised to investigate and
prosecute anyone responsible for such abuses, but Human Rights
Watch said it had made little effort to do so.
“In resorting to tactics that violate the rights of
detainees, Ivorian security forces may be fuelling the ethnic
and political divisions that are at the root of these attacks,”
the report said.
One civilian victim of abuse interviewed by the rights group
said he had not been involved in the war or the recent violence.
He said he did not know what he would do now if asked to take up
arms and fight against the army.
“When people have been stripped of everything, when all we
are left with is hatred … we’re a long way from
reconciliation,” he said.
(Reporting By Joe Bavier; editing by Christopher Wilson)
