CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Government urged to repatriate Chadian irregulars

BANGUI, 9 Dec 2003 (IRIN) - A human rights association in the Central African Republic (CAR) has asked the transitional government of Francois Bozize to repatriate armed Chadian forces, whom it described as mercenaries, over their alleged involvement in human rights abuses in the capital, Bangui.

"The Ligue Centrafricaine des Droits de l’Homme [LCDH] demands the pull out of Chadian non-conventional forces from CAR territory," Ngamatouwa Goungaye Wanfiyo, the association's deputy chairman, said in a communiqué issued on Monday.

He said that despite repeated denunciations by the LCDH, the main human rights body in the country, "summary executions persist in total impunity."

The LCDH is chaired by Nicolas Tiangaye, the speaker of the National Transitional Council, the country’s law advisory body.

Wanfiyo said that the Chadian "mercenaries", who supported Bozize in his six-month rebellion against former President Ange-Felix Patasse, were responsible for human right abuses and insecurity prevailing in the country. Bozize overthrew Patasse in a coup on 15 March.

Among the human rights abuses allegedly committed by CAR security forces or by the mercenaries, Wanfiyo said, were the killing of three men belonging to a local self-defence group in a Bangui suburb on 3 December; the killing of an army lieutenant by Chadian mercenaries on 5 December in another Bangui suburb and two other separate killings by Chadians on Sunday in Bangui.

He said the government was responsible for these human right violations as it had failed to take action to end them. He urged the government to take legal action against members of the security forces who were known to have committed some of the offences.

The LCDH communiqué was issued two days after two demonstrations by Bangui residents protesting against the killings of innocent people and the impunity that the perpetrators of the crimes seemed to enjoy.

In November, Bozize disbanded a presidential intelligence unit, the Section d’Enquete, de Recherche et de Documentation (SERD), after reports that five soldiers attached to the unit had gang-raped a woman in a Bangui suburb.

The LCDH said the three members of the local self-defence unit were tortured at SERD before they were killed and dumped at the Ndres cemetery in the city.

The association denounced the human rights violations days after the EC completed its report on the CAR, in which it pointed at security forces as being responsible for human rights abuses. The EC decided to partially maintain its cooperation with the CAR government but to suspend road- repair and macro-economic aid pending the improvement of the human rights situation and adherence to the transitional electoral calendar.

In the meantime, the chairman of the Mouvement pour la democratie, renaissance et evolution en Centrafrique political party, Joseph Bendounga, has threatened to lodge a complaint with the International Criminal Court against Bozize over alleged human rights violations by his former fighters from Chad.

Bendounga is the only political leader whose party is not represented in Bozize's transitional administration, and the only one to have openly criticised the administration.