Post date: Dec 19, 2013 2:21:28 PM
Amnesty International researchers report that the death toll in Central African Republic is much greater than previously reported by the Red Cross. War crimes and human rights abuses committed by both Christian and Muslims, with neighbours attacking neighbours.
LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (DECEMBER 19, 2013) (REUTERS) - A team of Amnesty International researchers, who have just returned from a fact-finding mission to Central African Republic, on Thursday (December 19) said that they believe the death toll in recent attacks is at least twice as high as was previously reported by the Red Cross.
The three-person Amnesty team spent two weeks in the capital of Bangui, to document the violations and abuses that have taken place since violence erupted on December 5, with an early morning attack by the Christian militia, known as anti-balaka.In some Bangui neighbourhoods the anti-balaka forces went door to door and killed approximately 60 Muslim men, Amnesty said.
The de facto government forces, known as ex-Seleka, retaliated on a larger scale against Christians, killing nearly 1,000 men over a two-day period.
Central African Researcher at Amnesty, Christian Mukosa, said there was widespread looting and attacks on civilian homes.
"This is a situation where you have neighbours killing each other. And you have people who knew each other for a long long time are killing each other and using machetes to not make more noise when killing. So we came across a lot of issues of extrajudicial executions, mutilation of bodies, in fact people are not only killing, they killing and mutilating bodies," he told a news conference inLondon.
Amnesty said that in the days that followed the Bangui violence, human rights violations and abuses continued at a "staggering pace".
"The Seleka carried out an enormous wave of retaliation killings. In carrying out those killings they made no meaningful effort...in some cases they claimed to be searching for anti-balaka forces, but they made no meaningful effort to distinguish the anti-balaka from any other Christian male. Several witnesses told Amnesty International 'They were just looking for men to kill'. In all we estimate that approximately 800 to 1,200 men were killed during this period. The vast majority of them being Christian," said Joanna Mariner, Senior Crisis Response Advisor at Amnesty.
The Red Cross had previously reported that around 460 people were killed in the violence. ButAmnesty believes the true figure in Bangui to be much higher, because many people chose to bury the dead themselves, rather than take bodies to the Red Cross.
Neither the Red Cross nor Amnesty International have been able to travel to other parts of the country to see what is happening there.
Despite the presence of French and African forces civilians are still being killed on a daily basis, said Amnesty.
The rights group says that more international troops are now urgently needed to stop the tit-for-tat killings.
"There is no presence of state and only the international community can help to protect the civilians and to save lives. This is why Amnesty International are pushing to have a robust UN peacekeeping force to effectively protect the population of CAR, not only in Bangui but also in other parts of the country," said Mukosa.
Amnesty says the lack of justice and accountability in CAR right now is contributing to the downward spiral of revenge killings.
In total some 614,000 people have been displaced, 189,000 in Bangui alone, amounting to a quarter of the city's population.
Amnesty is also calling for the UN to speed up its plans for a Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights. It wants theInternational Criminal Court to become involved.