"New mass graves found near site of Ivory Coast attack" by Robbie Corey-Boulet |
Associated Press, November 07, 2012
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Up to 10 new mass graves have been discovered
near the site of a July attack on a camp for displaced people, officials
said Tuesday, amid allegations that initial casualty totals were
downplayed to mask killings carried out by the national army.
I don't think they have to worry.
Related: World Court Whitewashes Ivory Coast War Crimes
Going nowhere for the obvious reasons.
Rights groups claim summary executions were carried out by the
Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. Last month, officials found six
bodies in a well close to the former campsite in the western town of
Duekoue.
Government, army, and UN officials toured 10 more graves in the same
area on Saturday, said Paul Mondouho, vice mayor of Duekoue. He said the
graves had first been identified by civilians, and that officials did
not know the number of bodies they contained.
‘‘People were suspecting the presence of bodies in these graves
because of the smell coming out of them and because of the shoes we saw
nearby,’’ Mondouho said.
Prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau, who is based in the commercial
capital of Abidjan, confirmed that multiple new graves had been
discovered but could not provide details. UN officials and the local
prosecutor in charge of investigating the suspected killings could not
be reached Tuesday.
UN spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg confirmed that UN forces
helped Ivorian authorities secure a perimeter around 10 wells ‘‘similar
to the one in which six bodies were found,’’ and that ‘‘some of those
wells are suspected mass graves.’’
She stressed that Ivorian authorities were leading the investigation but that the UN was able to provide assistance.
Army spokesmen could not be reached Tuesday. The Justice Ministry has
previously vowed to investigate the discovery of the initial grave.
On the morning of July 20, a mob descended on the UN-guarded Nahibly
camp, which housed 4,500 people displaced by violence in Ivory Coast,
burning most of the camp to the ground. Officials said at the time that
six people were killed.
Why is it the U.N can't protect shit?
The attack was prompted by the shooting deaths of four men and one
woman on the night of July 19, according to local officials and
residents. In response a mob of some 300 people overran the camp on July
20 after the perpetrators reportedly fled there.
The victims in the July 19 attack lived in a district dominated by
the Malinke ethnic group, which largely supported President Alassane
Ouattara in the disputed November 2010 election. The camp primarily
housed members of the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported former
President Laurent Gbagbo.
Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office despite losing the election sparked months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives.
Albert Koenders, the top UN envoy to Ivory Coast, said one week after
the attack that UN security forces had been inside and outside the camp
at the time but that no Ivorian security forces were present. He said
the UN forces decided not to fire at a large group of people that were
attacking the camp in order to avoid ‘‘a massacre.’’
Several witnesses have said soldiers and traditional hunters, known
as dozos, participated in the attack on the camp. Both military and dozo
leaders have denied the claims, saying they had tried to protect the
camp.
In a statement released Friday, the International Federation for
Human Rights said it had information confirming that the six bodies
found in October were men who had been summarily executed by the army.
‘‘The disappearance of dozens of displaced persons after the attack,
as well as confirmation of cases of summary and extra-judicial
executions, suggest a much higher victim rate than the official figures
report,’’ said the organization.
Duekoue was one of the hardest-hit towns during the post-election
violence. The UN has established that at least 505 people were killed in
and around the town.
--more--"
"Amnesty International says Ivory Coast is torturing detainees" by Robbie Corey-Boulet |
Associated Press, October 27, 2012
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast security officials are torturing
dozens of detainees by administering electric shocks and other forms of
abuse, Amnesty International alleged Friday.
The victims include people charged with endangering state security in
the wake of a recent spate of attacks targeting military installations.
Since early August, unknown gunmen have carried out roughly 10 attacks
at installations throughout the country, including in the commercial
capital of Abidjan.
United Nations officials have said that more than 200 people have
been detained on suspicion of involvement in the attacks, and that
torture has been documented at multiple detention facilities.
Gaetan Mootoo, West Africa researcher for Amnesty, said an
investigation team received reports of a range of abuses during a recent
monthlong visit.
--more--"
"Britain urged to investigate Trafigura scandal" by ROBBIE COREY-BOULET, Associated Press /
September 25, 2012
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — The British government is urged by
Amnesty International and Greenpeace to investigate possible criminal
charges against the multinational firm Trafigura, over the dumping of
toxic waste in Ivory Coast that is blamed for several deaths and
sickening thousands.
It's also a well-known but seldom-publicized fact that the industrial nations of the west and north use African waters as a dumping ground. That's one motivation behind the Somali pirates.
The 2006 waste disposal in Abidjan has come here to represent the arrogance of the western world toward the African continent.
Related:
"On
December 12, 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank,
Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-polluted."
Just wanted to provide you an example of arrogance.
A three-year-long investigation by Amnesty International and
Greenpeace published Tuesday points to ‘‘clear evidence that at least
part of the decision-making process on export of the waste from Europe
and delivery to Abidjan emanated from London,’’ making U.K. prosecutions
feasible.
The report calls for the United Kingdom to undertake criminal
investigations against Trafigura. It also urges Ivory Coast to review a
2007 decision that gave Trafigura immunity from prosecution on Ivorian
soil, and to probe how compensation from an out-of-court settlement in
the U.K. was allowed to be misappropriated.
Britain’s government responded Tuesday, saying it would be
inappropriate for the U.K. to launch an investigation because the vessel
involved was not registered in the U.K. and the waste wasn’t loaded in
or originating from the U.K.
‘‘We condemn incidents such as occurred in Abidjan where toxic waste
was dumped, with such devastating effects on human life and the
environment,’’ a spokesman from the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs said. ‘‘Controls are in place in the UK to help prevent
such incidents occurring, including controls on ships waste and on the
import and export of hazardous waste.’’
More than 100,000 people sought medical treatment in the first five
months after the waste was dumped in Abidjan in 2006, according to
Ivorian authorities. A national commission of inquiry reported 15
deaths, though an Ivorian court put that number at 17. Trafigura has
disputed those figures, saying the waste could only have caused ‘‘low
level flulike symptoms and anxiety.’’
The new report says the dead included a 6-month-old baby and an
inmate at Abidjan’s main prison said to be 12 or 13 years old. Waste had
been dumped just a few meters from the prison’s juvenile block.
Six years ago on a morning burned into the collective memory of this
West African nation, Abidjan residents awoke to a smell that was a
mixture of rotten eggs and gasoline fumes.
Overnight on Aug. 20, 2006, toxic waste from the ship Probo Koala had
been dumped in at least 18 locations throughout the city, including
near houses, schools and crops.
Before long, residents reported symptoms including nausea,
respiratory problems and burning skin, and the lack of information on
what was causing the smell and symptoms created panic.
The new report describes how Trafigura purchased large amounts of an
unrefined gasoline called coker naphtha, then subjected it to a refining
process known as ‘‘caustic washing,’’ which is known to create
hazardous waste. The caustic washing was initially carried out on land
in the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, but Tunisian authorities
suspended the process in April 2006 after workers became ill, and the
rest of the process was carried out at sea, according to the report.
The multinational attempted to offload the waste in Gibraltar, Malta,
France and Italy without success, the report says. An agreement was
then reached with a Dutch company to offload the waste in Amsterdam, but
the company raised its price after tests showed the waste would require
more specialized treatment than had originally been expected. After
failing to offload the waste in Lagos, Nigeria, a Trafigura subsidiary
arranged for it to be offloaded in Abidjan in August by Compagnie Tommy,
a firm that had received its operational license the previous month.
Fabrice Gbangbo, 37, who lives near the open-air Akouedo dumpsite,
the initial offloading point for the waste, described to the AP how he
woke up the morning after the waste had been deposited to see large
blisters forming on his skin.
‘‘Everybody was panicking here,’’ he said. ‘‘No one knew where the smell was coming from.’’
Although the case has received much attention, the new report
contends that Trafigura’s role in the dumping ‘‘has never been subject
to a full court proceeding.’’ It also says Trafigura has blocked
attempts to obtain full information about the nature of the waste.
For example, Gbangbo said that without this information, residents of
his village would never know if they were completely safe. ‘‘I don’t
know if I'm still affected because we never had a good medical
analysis,’’ he said. ‘‘We think we are OK, but maybe we’re suffering
inside. I don’t know.’’
Responding to the report in a letter addressed to Amnesty Africa
Director Audrey Gaughran, Trafigura said the report contains
‘‘significant inaccuracies and misrepresentations,’’ but does not
specify them.
‘‘The report oversimplifies difficult legal issues, analyzes them
based on ill-founded assumptions and draws selective conclusions which
do not adequately reflect the complexity of the situation of the legal
processes,’’ reads the letter, signed by Eric de Turckheim, a member of
Trafigura’s supervisory board.
‘‘Courts in five jurisdictions have reviewed different aspects of the
incident, and decisions and settlements have been made. It is simply
wrong to suggest that the issues have not had the right judicial
scrutiny.’’
Trafigura agreed in February 2007 to pay roughly $200 million to
Ivory Coast for compensation and clean-up. This was the same settlement
that gave Trafigura immunity from prosecution in the country. However,
it is unclear whether all victims deemed eligible by the government for
compensation had received any money, said Amnesty’s Gaughran, who added
that the government’s list of victims was likely incomplete.
An additional $45 million in compensation was paid by Trafigura as
part of a 2009 settlement in a case brought in the U.K. by 30,000
victims, but the distribution process was corrupted when an organization
falsely claiming to represent victims effectively robbed some 6,000
victims of the money they were due to receive.
Ivory Coast’s Minister for African Integration Adama Bictogo resigned
in May over his alleged role in the scandal, though a prosecutor said
in July that charges would not be brought against him.
The letter from Trafigura says the apparent misappropriation of
compensation payments was ‘‘regrettable,’’ but that this was ‘‘entirely
outside our control.’’
Gaughran said it was important for Ivory Coast to review past
problems with compensation and to continue to distribute money to
victims who were not able to access previous compensation schemes.
One of the main lessons of the case, she added, was how difficult it
was to ensure accountability for actions taken in multiple countries,
but she said it was important that Trafigura be held responsible. ‘‘We
can’t end up in the position that just because three or four countries
are involved that somehow nobody can get to grips with the problem,’’
she said.
--more--"
UPDATES:
"Stampede after fireworks kills 61 in Ivory Coast" by Inza Bakayoko | Associated Press, January 02, 2013
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — This is not Ivory Coast’s first stadium tragedy. In 2009, 22 people died and over 130 were injured in a stampede at a World Cup qualifying match at the Houphouet Boigny stadium, prompting FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to impose a fine of tens of thousands of dollars on Ivory Coast’s soccer federation.
The government organized the fireworks to celebrate Ivory Coast’s peace....
State TV showed traumatic scenes....
--more--"
Related: Globe Says Goodbye to 2012
"Unofficial barriers blamed in deaths" by Inza Bakayoko | Associated Press, January 03, 2013
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Local newspapers are speculating that thieves put up the roadblocks so that pickpockets could steal money and mobile phones from the packed-in people.
President Alassane Outtara ordered three days of national mourning and launched an investigation.
--more--"
I don't think I've seen a word since.
"Pirates seize tanker in Ivory Coast" Associated Press, January 22, 2013
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Armed men have hijacked a tanker carrying 5,000 tons of oil from an Ivory Coast port and taken it off the coast of Ghana, though its precise whereabouts are unknown, government authorities and maritime officials said Monday.
The vessel ITRI was seized Wednesday as it was preparing to deposit oil at the port of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, according to the Ivory Coast government, which communicated for the first time on the case Monday....
Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s pirate reporting center in Malaysia, could not release information about the nationalities of the crew, but said in many previous cases, the pirates released the crew after they had siphoned out the oil and obtained any valuable cargo.
The ship initially had trouble docking because a sand storm reduced visibility, a government statement said....
Most hijackings in the region occur near oil-rich Nigeria. The first recorded vessel hijacking off Ivory Coast was in October, when 14 men armed with knives and AK-47s boarded a tanker carrying 30,000 tons of gasoline.
The crew was later released unharmed.
--more--"
