Central African Republic: Bangui sectarian crises have been between Muslims and Christians
Thursday crisis in Central African Republic leaves 11 dead
At least 11 people were killed in fighting between militiamen and traders in a restive district of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, two security officials and an imam said Thursday.
The security sources said between 11 and 14 people died after clashes erupted late Wednesday while the imam, Awad Al Karim, said “16 bodies” had been brought to the local Ali Babolo mosque. It has almost become a cycle of bloodshed in the Central African Republic. Peacekeeping forces have so far failed to stop the terror
The death records of the Bangui morgue in the Central African Republic read like a chapter out of Dante’s Inferno: page after page of people killed by machetes, torture, lynchings, shootings, explosions and burning. The overwhelming stench makes it impossible to stay there for long. On really bad days only the number of dead is recorded – not their names nor the causes of death – before the bodies are buried in mass graves.
The morgue is a terrible symbol of the toll of communal violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has raged for months and claimed tens of thousands of lives, displacing even more. Recently, the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim group of fighters that seized Bangui, the capital, and toppled the CAR’s government in early 2013, have lost some ground – although they continue to terrorise wherever possible.
In response Christian forces known as anti-balaka (balaka means ‘machete’ in Sango, the local language) have stepped up attacks against Muslim civilians in places where the Séléka no longer holds the sway it did a few months ago.
In hopes of quelling the situation, international peacekeeping forces are now in the country, and a new president, Catherine Samba-Panza – a former mayor of Bangui nicknamed Madame Courage –was installed in mid-January. She has promised that the country’s security forces will be reorganised to protect Muslims as well as Christians. But so far the violence has continued unabated. On January 29 two Muslim men were hacked to death and their bodies mutilated near Bangui’s international airport as onlookers cheered and filmed the scene.
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