03/15/2007

Contact: Rick Neal & Joel Charny
ri@refugeesinternational.org; 202-828-0110

On Sunday afternoon, March 11, Central African regular army troops burned at least 20 houses along a stretch of Regional Route 6 between Lia and Voh, approximately 30 kilometers south of Paoua in the tense northwest region of the country. Three civilians, including a baby, were killed in the crossfire and another one was seriously wounded in an encounter between the army and the rebel Armée Populaire pour la restauration de la république et la démocratie (APRD).

The violence belies assurances given to Refugees International by senior Central African military personnel that house burnings would cease under direct orders from the President and their commander in Bangui, the capital.

House burning, a tactic first used by the notorious Garde Présidentiel, has been rampant in the northwest as the Central African army, the FACA, confronts the APRD. On an extensive visit to the prefectures of Ouham and Ouham-Pendé, Refugees International confirmed that tens of burned villages remain empty, their residents having fled to safety in rough settlements in the scrub land near their fields. Approximately 250,000 Central Africans have been displaced in successive waves of violence since 2003.

Eyewitnesses to the March 11 attacks told Refugees International that the violence started as a confrontation in Lia between a small contingent of rebels, who move easily among the population, and a Central African army contingent moving up to Paoua from Bangui as part of a normal troop rotation. During an exchange with the rebels, Central African soldiers began shooting indiscriminately, and two civilians were killed in the crossfire, with one other individual seriously wounded.

The FACA troops got down from their vehicles and began walking through the village, setting fire to two houses using lighters. Rural houses in the CAR almost all have thatch roofs, and in the dry season they burn in a matter of minutes when the thatch catches fire.

The troops then continued up the road through four additional villages, setting fire to more houses. In Leourou, a stray bullet killed a baby on its mother’s back. The mother survived.

The rampage ended in Voh, where at least 10 houses were burned. Several civilians tried to shelter their bicycles and motorcycles in the church, but the soldiers removed them from the church and burned them.

Refugees International was able to visit Voh and assess the damage to the village. While the walls of the mud brick houses were no longer hot to the touch, up to three inches of fine ash remained in the burned houses, suggesting that the burning occurred recently. Metal cooking pots were randomly strewn among the ashes. The RI team also saw the charred remains of a bicycle and a motorbike. Further fighting along the road to Voh on March 14 prevented the RI team from going as far as Lia to assess the damage where the fighting started.

House burning is a clear violation of international humanitarian law, as it targets the assets of civilian non-combatants. It is an especially devastating tactic in Central Africa because poor villagers keep almost all their wordly possessions in their homes. When asked to cite their losses, the few residents of Voh who had not fled into the bush listed their stores of peanuts, corn, and cassava, as well as money, hand tools, plates, and other basic household items. They now face the coming planting season with virtually no resources.

House burning produces displacement by driving the occupants of the village into the fields to find shelter and escape the depredations of the FACA. But they have an additional ripple effect in neighboring villages, as people gather their belongings and head to the bush as a preventive measure. During its assessment of the northwest, RI saw many villages that were abandoned without any evidence of burning.

The house burnings are especially disturbing because under increasing international awareness and scrutiny, the Central African authorities maintained that they were prepared to reduce the harshness of their counter-insurgency tactics in the northwest. Two high-ranking Central African military officials based in the region had told RI unequivocally that house burnings were forbidden.

Just before learning of the incident, the RI team was having lunch in the market in Paoua and discussing the overall situation with local residents. They were aware that a new group of soldiers was rotating in, replacing the previous contingent that had been there for 18 months during some of the most extensive violence and attacks on civilians. They expressed optimism that the presence of new soldiers would represent a new era in relations between the FACA and residents of the region. These hopes appear to be misplaced.

Refugees International was unable to see the regional commander in Paoua to present its findings on this incident as he was out of the regional center. The commander must investigate this incident, discipline the perpetrators, and confirm the illegality of this tactic with the troops under his command.

International presence in Paoua is extremely thin, with only the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins sans Frontières, and COOPI, an Italian NGO, based in this important regional center with large numbers of people in distress. The absence of the United Nations in Paoua is painfully obvious. It is essential that the United Nations push forward with its previously announced plans to establish a UN regional office in Paoua, which would bring together key humanitarian response agencies of the UN system, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF, the World Food Program, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Refugees International Vice President Joel Charny and Advocate Rick Neal are completing a survey of humanitarian conditions in the Central African Republic.