Evidence of ethnic cleansing of Muslims
Print Edition
A United Nations commission of inquiry says it has found evidence of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Central African Republic, but it couldn’t prove that genocide has occurred amid months of unprecedented sectarian violence that left thousands dead.
The UN commission’s final report released on Thursday also said that while death toll reports range from 3,000 to 6,000, any such number is a “radical under-estimate” of the people killed in the vicious fighting that continues among Christians and Muslims in the impoverished, landlocked nation.
The three-member commission accuses both sides of war crimes and crimes against humanity but accuses the anti-Balaka Christian militia of ethnic cleansing of Muslims. It warns “the principal actors clearly retain a significant capacity to re-ignite the situation and trigger a renewed cycle of killings.”
Thousands of Muslims have fled the country, a forced and deadly displacement the UN has called as ethnic cleansing.
The UN has classified the chaos as a top-level humanitarian crisis, just one of four current ones around the world along with Syria, Iraq and South Sudan. Meanwhile, a fragile transitional government is trying to hold elections by an August 2015 deadline.
A UN mission took over peacekeeping duties from an African Union force in September, but it faces an enormous task: bringing peace to a country the size of Texas with some 4.6 million people and little infrastructure. Its vast north was largely anarchic even before the violence erupted and is home to a number of rebel groups.
Mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in Central African Republic in March 2013, overthrowing the president of a decade. Their leader stepped down in January 2014, setting off a series of reprisal attacks by the anti-Balaka.
The security situation remains so precarious that the commission says it was impossible to visit the central part of the country because of a “hostile and violent atmosphere.” Its final report focuses on its visits to the capital, Bangui, and the western part of the country.
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