| Summary: | "For six months, Côte d'Ivoire residents endured horrific human rights abuses following the refusal of incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo to relinquish power when the country's electoral commission and international observers declared his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, the winner of the November 28, 2010, run-off election. Months after the April 11 arrest of Gbagbo by Ouattara's armed forces, the prospect of one-sided justice threatens to prolong the country's divisions and impede the reestablishment of the rule of law. In the election's aftermath, Gbagbo's elite security forces unleashed a systematic campaign of violence against real and perceived Ouattara supporters, including through the violent suppression of demonstrations, the abduction and killing of neighborhood political leaders, and the rape of women and girls. As the Gbagbo government-controlled media incited hate against pro-Ouattara groups, Gbagbo's militias stopped them at checkpoints or attacked them in their neighborhoods, beating them to death, shooting them, or burning them alive. Three months after Gbagbo refused to cede power, pro-Ouattara forces--largely the former rebel army of his prime minister, Guillaume Soro--launched an offensive to remove Gbagbo from power. In sweeping the country, these forces often inflicted a collective punishment against pro-Gbagbo ethnic groups through widespread executions, torture, and the burning of villages. By the fighting's end in mid-May 2011, at least 3,000 people had been killed and more than 150 women raped, often in targeted acts perpetrated along political, ethnic, and religious lines. Based on six field missions to Côte d'Ivoire between December 2010 and July 2011 and over 500 interviews with victims and witnesses to the violence, this report documents crimes that reach the level of war crimes and likely crimes against humanity. The report further identifies 13 military and political leaders implicated in grave crimes either directly or through command responsibility, based on the accumulated evidence. It also details the failure, thus far, of the Ouattara government to ensure that perpetrators from both sides of the conflict are brought to justice for abuses they perpetrated."--P. [4] of cover.
|
|---|
