Central African Republic: Muslims Trapped in Enclaves | WPN World People News

Hundreds of Muslim residents in western parts of the Central African Republic are trapped in enclaves in deplorable conditions, Human Rights Watch said on December 22, 2014. They fear attacks if they leave, but interim government authorities and United Nations peacekeepers block them from fleeing abroad or provide no security assistance when they try to leave.

Displacement site at Yaloké, where 509 ethnic Peuhl Muslims are housed in government buildings in the town center in deplorable conditions.

“Those trapped in some of the enclaves face a grim choice: leave and face possible attack from anti-balaka fighters, or stay and die from hunger and disease,” said Lewis Mudge, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “While there are good reasons to ensure that the country’s Muslim population does not diminish further, under the current circumstances, the government’s policy of no evacuations is absolutely indefensible.” UN peacekeepers should not be complicit in preventing Muslims from leaving to seek safety, Human Rights Watch said.

Camp leaders in the western Muslim enclaves of Yaloké, Carnot, and Boda told Human Rights Watch during a research mission from December 7 to14, 2014, that an estimated 1,750 Muslims, many of them ethnic Peuhl herders, are desperate to leave.

They say that many are trapped in places where they never lived, that they are unable to leave for fear of the anti-balaka fighters, who have been attacking the country’s Muslims, and that the UN peacekeeping force, MINUSCA, is not authorized to help them seek safety. In the Yaloké enclave, UN peacekeepers have repeatedly used force to stop Muslims from leaving.

The vast majority of Muslims in western parts of the country fled brutal attacks by Christian and animist anti-balaka militia in late 2013 and early 2014. Those who were not able to reach Cameroon or Chad became trapped in the enclaves, where they have spent months living in difficult conditions. UN officials, as well as African Union (AU) MISCA and French Sangaris peacekeepers supported evacuations in late 2013 and early 2014, helping thousands of Muslims to seek safety, including in Cameroon. The Chadian army also evacuated thousands of Muslims.

But in April when UN humanitarian agencies, together with French and AU peacekeepers, finally agreed, after considerable international pressure, to evacuate besieged Muslims from PK12, a district in Bangui, transitional authorities were outraged. They said they had not given approval and opposed any further evacuations without their consent.

Human Rights Watch met with government authorities, diplomats, and humanitarian agency representatives who said the interim government did not wish more Muslim residents to flee the country for fear of being seen as assisting ethnic cleansing. Pirette Benguele, the sub-prefect, the top administrative official of Yaloké, told Human Rights Watch in December: “We cannot accept that the Peuhl are evacuated. This is a political crisis and we need them to stay … so we can begin reconciliation with them.”

Officials at the UN’s Department of Peace Keeping Operations told Human Rights Watch on December 20 that the UN is strongly urging transitional authorities to support further transfers of those who wish to leave.

Since the April decision, international peacekeepers from both the AU forces and replacement UN forces deployed in September have prevented Muslims from leaving the Yaloké enclave, where 509 ethnic Peuhl are housed in dilapidated government buildings in the town center. The peacekeepers have used physical force and intimidation to stop Muslims from getting on the commercial convoys – usually dozens of trucks heading to Cameroon – that stop 100 feet from the enclave twice a week. UN peacekeepers provide military escorts to the convoys to deter attacks from the anti-balaka and other bandits.

Camp officials told Human Rights Watch they saw the convoys as their best, and only safe, way to reach Cameroon as they do not have other access to vehicles and the truck drivers do not object. In June Human Rights Watch reported that AU peacekeepers had threatened to shoot Peuhl trying to board a commercial convoy for Cameroon.

In December, a 55-year-old woman from Mbaïki told Human Rights Watch: “We want only to go to Cameroon. I have a son there.… We have tried to leave with our things many times, but the answer from MINUSCA is always no. We have tried at least 12 times to leave, but each time they pulled me off the trucks.”

The UN commanding officer in Yaloké confirmed that his forces removed Muslims from the trucks, saying that when they are told about Peuhl who “try to sneak into the convoy, we take them out and put them back into the site.”

UN peacekeeping officials in Bangui, the capital, and representatives of the UN special representative of the secretary general for MINUSCA, visited the site in Yaloké in December. Peuhl living there informed the delegations that they wanted to leave but were being blocked by the peacekeepers. International law grants everyone the right “to leave any country, including his own” and to seek asylum abroad. Muslims in the enclaves also have the right to freedom of movement in their own country.

“Using force to keep threatened Muslims in the Yaloké enclave from fleeing to safety is contrary to everything the UN stands for,” Mudge said. “UN peacekeepers shouldn’t play any part in a government policy that violates the rights of Muslims to seek safety and condemns them to deadly conditions in the enclaves.”

Those trapped in Yaloké face abysmal conditions with unacceptable and growing numbers of avoidable deaths. Since February, camp representatives have recorded the deaths of 42 Peuhl, many of them children, from malnutrition and respiratory and other diseases. Health professionals at the local hospital said the death rate amongst the Peuhl is significantly higher than Yaloké’s other residents. In the same six-month period that hospital staff recorded the deaths of 13 children from the enclave, only one local child died. The Peuhl have received some humanitarian assistance, but it is neither appropriate nor regular enough to stop growing levels of malnutrition.

On December 9, after visiting the Yaloké site, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF issued a report describing the deplorable conditions and called for an “evacuation of all [displaced] Peuhls from Yaloké.”

In the enclaves of Carnot, Berbérati, and the Muslim neighborhood in Boda, living conditions are less life-threatening, but hundreds of Muslims still express a desire to leave. UN peacekeepers at these sites do not block the Muslims from leaving on foot, but Muslims say they fear anti-balaka attacks and need the peacekeepers’ help to reach safety. Often out of desperation, many Muslims have left Carnot and Berbérati by organizing their own transport. The two enclaves are off the main road to Cameroon, and no regular convoys pass. Some have made it to Cameroon or other places of safety; others have not.

In late November a Peuhl man was viciously attacked by the anti-balaka when he tried to leave Carnot at night with his wife to find their children, whom they believed were in Cameroon. The attackers tried to cut off his hand, broke the bones of his feet with machetes, and the next morning slit his throat, killing him.

In Berbérati, on September 19, a group of men attacked Harouna Rachid Mamouda, an Imam, when he left the Catholic parish to drop off a letter. His attackers were discussing lynching him when local gendarme and UN peacekeepers rescued him.

“Muslim residents are left with the awful choice of living in desperate conditions in the enclaves or running the gauntlet of trying to reach Cameroon on their own,” Mudge said. “The transitional government should work with UN officials to help Muslims who want to leave and to substantially improve conditions for those who decide to remain.”

Source: Human Rights Watch