INTERNATIONAL
SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2011
UN discovers 115 bodies in western Ivory Coast Some were burned alive, others drowned
CHIGI: Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi shares a joke with two of the post graduate students who were awarded during a ceremony yesterday. — AP
Berlusconi jokes about ‘bunga bunga’ ROME: Premier Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t seem to be letting his legal woes get him down. Yesterday, as he handed out prizes to a dozen promising young college graduates, he joked that two blonde recipients were so wonderful he was thinking of inviting them to his famed “bunga bunga” parties. And he told one of their male friends he was cute enough to come along as well. Berlusconi went on trial this week on charges he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl at some of those parties then tried to use his influence to cover it up. He and the girl both deny that they had sex. The 74-year-old premier is an unapologetic jokester who frequently explains away off-color gaffes as harmless jokes. —AP
Niger Delta hopes could weigh heavy on Jonathan DUTCH ISLAND: Wooden canoes rock between piles of rubbish on the edge of an island in the swamps of the Niger Delta, home to a fishing community resigned for decades to empty government promises. Until now. Dutch Island is typical of many areas in the heartland of Africa’s largest energy industry. Electricity pylons and makeshift cast iron water tanks were constructed years ago but a failure to finish the job means people travel for hours to get clean drinking water. They’ve never had mains electricity. President Goodluck Jonathan is the first national leader to hail from the Niger Delta and comes from a family who built the same canoes still used by fisherman in the vast wetlands. He will have the widespread support of the local people in a nationwide presidential election on April 16. But expectations that Jonathan will answer the region’s prayers are sky high, in an area where most people live in poverty despite huge oil and gas resources under their feet. “We need water, power, boats, nets, jobs for fishermen, employment for farmers. Jonathan will bring them all for us,” said Edward Adieka, a fisherman and respected elder in a community of around 50 people. “Everyone in the Niger Delta is ready to vote for him,” Adieka says, pointing at a rotting wooden bench he has set out for election officials, who failed to arrive for a parliamentary election last Saturday which has been postponed by a week. Jonathan, who inherited the presidency last year after his predecessor died, is favourite to win a presidential vote in 8 days time and he will have a mountain of work on his hands if he is to maintain support in his home region, beset by crises. A fragile amnesty brokered by Jonathan has stalled militant sabotage attacks on oil facilities, which at their height in 2006 knocked out more than a quarter of Nigeria’s oil output. But Jonathan will need to provide the old gang members with jobs and bring more of the oil wealth to local communities if he is to sustain peace. Communities who rely on the waterways of the delta complain pollution caused by oil companies has destroyed their fishing livelihood, while a lack of jobs and poor infrastructure fuels crime in major cities like the overcrowded hub Port Harcourt. Delayed energy reforms before parliament are supposed to support more equal oil wealth distribution but there is no guarantee the legislation will pass and in what form.— Reuters
DAKAR/GENEVA: United Nations staff in western Ivory Coast have found more than 100 bodies in the past 24 hours, some burned alive and others thrown down a well, in a further sign of the ethnic violence gripping the country. The grim discovery came a week after the International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 800 bodies had been found in the town of Duekoue after an explosion of inter-communal violence. United Nations human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said yesterday that UN workers had found 15 more bodies in Duekoue, where the burnings took place, and had discovered more than 60 in Guiglo and 40 in Blolequin-all on Thursday. He said it was hard to say who was responsible as long-running ethnic tensions in the region have grown alongside fighting between forces loyal to presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara and those of his rival Laurent Gbagbo. However, he said the victims in Duekoue appeared to be from the Guere ethnic group supporting Gbagbo, and that the killings took place when fighters loyal to Ouattara took control of the town in their advance towards the south. “With these very ugly tit-for-tat killings in Duekoue ... (and) 100 more bodies found just yesterday, you’re talking about quite an escalation,” he told a news briefing in Geneva. “Some of the victims seem to have been burnt alive, and some corpses were thrown down a well,” he said, adding that the murders appeared to have been in retaliation for the mid-March killing of 100 people by pro-Gbagbo forces in the same town. The bodies found in Guiglo and in Blolequin were mostly lying in the streets. Most appeared to have been shot while running away and were wearing civilian clothes. “(In Blolequin) the perpetrators are said to have been Liberian militias, who spared the Guere from other groups after separating them out,” Colville said. “Blolequin was described by the human rights team as a dead town. The population has all fled, and there has clearly been a lot of looting.” The three towns lie at the heart of the
ABIDJAN: Pro-Gbagbo protestors, one of them holding a defaced poster depicting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, attends a demonstration to condemn French military action. — AP cocoa-growing region in the world’s biggest producer, near the border with Liberia. The area has long been prey to deep ethnic rivalries that have fuelled feuding between local Guere tribes and immigrant farmers from neighbouring West African countries, mostly Mali and Burkina Faso, who form the backbone of the cocoa workforce. Religious and tribal fault lines in the region mirror the divide between Gbagbo, whose traditional power base is in the Christian south, and Ouattara’s Muslim, northern-based forces. Ethnic loyalties straddle the border with Liberia, and both camps have recruited Liberian mercenaries hardened by years of civil war in their own country. Brutal massacres, exacerbated by festering land disputes, have bloodied western Ivory Coast for over a decade and pose a huge challenge for Ouattara, who is seeking to assert his authority after forcing Gbagbo to hole up in a bunker in the commercial capital Abidjan. “These killings along ethnic and religious lines, committed by both sides of the political divide,
illuminate the deep-seated divisions in Ivory Coast,” Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch said. “Ouattara must seek to reconcile these divisions at once and ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable.” While Gbagbo’s soldiers have been fingered for most of the atrocities since a disputed November election, Ouattara’s forces have also been accused of serious human rights abuses, a factor that could further undermine his legitimacy after taking power. Ouattara, recognized as the election winner according to UN-certified results, pledged in a speech on Thursday to bring those responsible for violence against civilians to justice. At a Ouattara military camp north of Abidjan, Zacaria Kone, a senior commander, scolded about 100 of his soldiers yesterday. “Don’t go killing someone. If there is a problem, see one of your chiefs here. They (the pro-Gbagbo militias) have massacred our families, but they will answer for that,” he said. Asked by Reuters whether he was referring to specific abuses by his troops, Kone said: “I will think about that question.” — Reuters
Italy, France to work to block out migrants MILAN: Seeking to diffuse a tense border crisis, Italy and France have agreed to joint sea-and-air patrols to try to block new Tunisian migrants from sailing to European shores. The deal was announced yesterday by Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni after meeting with his French counterpart in Milan. Rome and Paris have been sparring fiercely over what to do about the more than 20,000 Tunisians who sailed across the Mediterranean to Italy in recent weeks after political upheaval in their North African homeland. But some concessions seemed to emerge after the meeting between Maroni and French Interior Minister Claude Gueant. “We have agreed
on developing common action,” Maroni told reporters, adding that both sides would “take initiatives to block the departure of clandestine migrants from Tunisia” with joint sea-and-air patrols. Only a day earlier, Maroni accused France of harboring a hostile attitude toward the migrants from Tunisia, a former French colony. Paris, in turn, had vowed to tighten its own border controls in possible violation of EU-wide border rules so that migrants couldn’t cross into French territory from northwest Italy. The two European neighbors also agreed yesterday to work out a system under which migrants receiving temporary residency permits from Italian authori-
ties would head back to Tunisia during the permit period on what Maroni called a “voluntary” basis. It was not immediately clear how that would work. Gueant promised that France would follow the Schengen free-circulation rules for those holding valid documents from member states - border rules followed by many European countries - but he insisted that the Tunisian migrants must have “economic resources.” That appeared to be a concession, for France in recent days has blocked the entry of hundreds of Tunisians who have been trying to cross into France from northwest Italy. Neither man took questions and details were not immediately available. —AP