Silence, As The Killings Go On...

11/11/2020 - Danièle Boni-Claverie , URD president.

Horror in M'Batto! Nearly 40 dead, we are told. 12 missing and 120 wounded in a single day. Unbearable images of charred bodies, severed heads turned into footballs, bloody bodies cut up with machetes.

Youth, where do they train you?

Ivory Coast, to what depth of your very essence will you let yourself be scared?

How many pogroms will you have to endure before the so-called International Community, the defenders of Human Rights of all stripes tell Mr Alassane Ouattara: " Enough! "and finally react to the spectre of a civil war and a "Rwandanisation" of confrontations.

I feel bad for France, my mother's country of origin, which practices an incomprehensible policy of omerta. She is silent because "she doesn't want to interfere".

While she was so quick to congratulate Niger for abiding by its Constitution, the Mother of Freedoms and Human Rights refuses to recognise the unconstitutionality of the outgoing President's third term and plays the ostrich in full view of instrumentalization of the militias who are decimating a people, marching with their bare hands.

France clings to the respect of constitutional order, ignoring the bedrock of the opposition's struggle. The people of Côte d'Ivoire rise up against injustice, the failure of the regime to keep their word, the denial and violation of our fundamental laws and texts and the many contradictions of a reality hidden by propaganda.

Ivorians want to recover the democratic instruments of their sovereignty.

Indeed, how can the regime explain that Prime Minister Affi NGuessan has not been incarcerated in an identified prison and that his whereabouts are still unknown to his lawyers? How can we justify the blockade of the homes of political leaders without a warrant for house arrest, and the detention of a member of parliament, Maurice Guikahué, who also enjoys parliamentary immunity? Where is the Rule of Law?

No! deaths and violence are not the results of peaceful civil disobedience. The clashes began when the militias, commonly known as "the microbes", attacked , unarmed young women and men protesting against the constitutional coup d'état of the third term, last August.

The stalemate is total. A mere tête-à-tête between old friends cannot shift positions. The URD, however, fully agrees with the demand for an inclusive dialogue, extended to all the opposition platforms and political parties, with prior measures of appeasement.

For years, URD has consistently proposed a democratic transition that would bring together all the nation's active forces to write a new social contract. Our country is fractured, divided, with no moral foundations to separate good from evil. We are confused.

For the sake of peace, we are ready to make sacrifices but not to the point of giving carte blanche to a regime demonstrating day by day to be a little more dictatorial.

Ivorians, "proud artisans of the greatness" of their country, cannot tolerate submitting to the arbitrary and manipulations of established laws and regulations.

This goes against their sovereignty and does not serve their interests in any way.

 

published By ivorycoasttribune.com