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Muslims
Face Persecution in Ivory Coast: Paper
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Muslims face persecution in Ivory Coast
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CAIRO,
August 12 (IslamOnline.net) – Muslims are facing a daily ritual of
extermination, beating, robbery and even killing in Ivory Coast,
reported a local US newspaper on Thursday, August 12.
"They
take their money. They beat them" with climbing ropes which every
soldier and paramilitary policeman has tied around his waist,"
said the Seattle Post Intelligencer, quoting Idriss
Traore, 27, who is working as a private security guard.
The
Ivorian authorities have been accusing Muslims of "supporting
rebels and planning a failed attempt in 2002 to topple the ruling
Christian power".
The
United Nations had said that the Ivory Coast government was backing
death squads who are accused of killing, kidnapping and torturing
people with impunity.
The
International organization said the "death squads comprised
elements close to the government, the presidential guard and a tribal
militia of Betes", the ethnic group to which Ivorian President
Laurent Gbagbo belongs.
Ringing
Tins
To
face the mounting attacks of the Ivorian security forces against the
predominantly Muslim areas, the persecuted Muslims formed an informal
neighborhood watch program to foil any security attacks against
Muslims.
"When
uniformed men approached one recent night, old women came out and
began banging on tins," waking the neighborhood, Souleymane
Bamba, 34, a northern Muslim activist in opposition leader Alassane
Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans party said.
Some
other Muslim inhabitants use rings to defend themselves against
attacks of security forces against them.
"We
defend ourselves mystically," said Bamba, a local resident.
Muslims
in the west African country were targeted by the security forces due
to their support to opposition leader Ouattara, barred since 2000 from
standing in elections for allegedly being a foreigner himself.
The
controversy has brought waves of violence since 2000, killing hundreds
in the world's largest cocoa-producer.
In
September 2002, the rebellion in Ivory Coast broke out when MPCI
insurgents, dominated by Muslims and northerners, rose up protesting
Gbagbo's policies of discrimination against people from the mainly
Muslim north, triggering the most serious crisis to hit the West
African country since independence from France in 1960.
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