The 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections in Côte d'Ivoire in October and December were marred by political violence which left over 200 people dead and hundreds wounded. In the months preceding the October presidential and December parliamentary elections, political leaders exploited ethnic divisions to oust rivals, used the state apparatus to repress opponents, and incited hatred and fear among populations which had for decades lived in relative harmony. Their actions culminated in two unprecedented waves of violence which shocked Ivorians and members of the international community alike, as well as grimly highlighting the danger of manipulating ethnic loyalties and latent prejudice for political gain. The legacy of the heightened suspicion and intolerance generated during the election period will take determined action to overcome; action which has so far been seriously lacking.

The violence shattered Côte d'Ivoire's hopes of rapidly regaining its status as francophone West Africa's economic powerhouse and a regional beacon of stability. This was lost a year earlier when a coup d'état against the corrupt government of incumbent elected president Henri Konan Bédié installed General Robert Guei as a military head of state in December 1999. General Guei had promised to return Côte d'Ivoire to civilian rule, and scheduled elections to do so, but had manipulated the process to such an extent that the legitimacy of the elections was already in doubt before they were held. A new constitution introduced by General Guei and approved by a July 2000 referendum required both parents of any Ivorian wishing to contest the presidential election to have been born in Côte d'Ivoire. This amendment was transparently designed to exclude Alassane Ouattara, the leader of the Rally of Republicans party (Rassemblement des Republicains, RDR), the largest opposition party, from the contest. On October 6, 2000, a controversial Supreme Court decision disqualified from running fourteen of the nineteen presidential candidates, including Ouattara, on citizenship grounds, and former president Bédié for not submitting a proper medical certificate. The Supreme Court, headed by General Guei's then legal adviser, was widely believed to have been hand picked by Guei himself.

On October 24, 2000, after early results showed Laurent Gbagbo, leader of the Ivorian Popular Front (Front Populaire Ivorien, FPI), leading in the presidential poll, General Guei dissolved the National Electoral Commission and proclaimed himself the winner. Just two days later, he fled the country, in the midst of violence surrounding protests at his attempts to rig the elections. Laurent Gbagbo was left as the leading presidential candidate.

Despite the very serious concerns surrounding the legitimacy of the elections-both the widespread violence and the exclusion of Alassane Ouattara from the contest-Gbagbo was installed as president. Gbagbo then used the same methods as his predecessor during the December parliamentary elections, in particular to ensure that Ouattara was once again not allowed to run. Since assuming office, he has failed to acknowledge the flawed manner in which he became head of state, to promise new elections, to seek accountability for the violence, or to take adequate steps to ensure that, under his leadership, Côte d'Ivoire would be characterized by the rule of law, not by ethno-religious tension and military impunity. 

The October 27, 2000, discovery of the bullet ridden bodies of fifty-seven young men in a forest on the outskirts of Abidjan, which became known as the Charnier de Yopougon (the mass grave of Yopougon, the name of a suburb near the forest) became the icon of the election violence and a test of President Gbagbo's ability and will to control the security forces implicated in the massacre. The majority of those killed, thirty to forty, had been detained as suspected RDR supporters within the Gendarme Camp of Abobo, located in one of Abidjan's most densely populated and pro-RDR neighborhoods. They were gunned down on October 26, apparently as an impulsive reaction by at least two gendarmes to the news that a gendarme lieutenant had been killed by RDR supporters. A subsequent operation to dispose of the bodies was premeditated and under more senior command. During this operation, some thirty gendarmes detained several young men as porters to carry the dead and wounded, transported them with the bodies in a convoy of one truck and two jeeps, and later executed them in the forest.

Around the time of this massacre, there were scores of other extrajudicial executions, as well as numerous "disappearances," sexual violence, hundreds of cases of torture, and the wanton destruction of property. The victims of these attacks were, before General Guei's flight, members both of Gbagbo's FPI and of Ouattara's RDR; once Guei had left the country, suspected members of the RDR, foreigners, and Muslims were the main victims. All the abuses went largely uninvestigated, with little hope of justice for the victims. 

President Gbagbo should have firmly brought the state security forces under control after assuming the presidency while taking steps to bring the perpetrators of the atrocities of October's state-sponsored violence to justice. However he failed to do so.

The December parliamentary elections were characterized by a further breakdown in the rule of law as state agents and their political supporters, encouraged by the impunity they enjoyed, perpetrated similar and in some cases worse acts of violence. While there were fewer killings, there were more cases of arbitrary detention, sexual violence, and religious persecution. Also, by December, the relationship between the security forces and the youth wing of Gbagbo's party had consolidated, with the latter enjoying complete immunity, even when they committed atrocities in the presence of gendarmes and police. 

Although President Gbagbo did not initiate the descent into violence, for which General Guei must bear primary responsibility, he continued to use the same methods of incitement and ethnic polarization, and has failed to take credible steps to bring to justice the perpetrators of violent human rights crimes or to ensure that such abuses cannot be repeated.

The state security forces-working first on behalf of military dictator General Robert Guei and, after he fled the country, on behalf of President Laurent Gbagbo-were responsible for the vast majority of serious abuses in both October and December. Within the security forces, the police and paramilitary gendarmes were most directly involved. The regular army largely stayed in its barracks apart from the Presidential Guard, most notably its elite Red Brigade, which committed abuses against protesters prior to the flight of General Robert Guei. Almost all of the reported killings by the security forces appeared to have been deliberate: in many cases there was evidence killings had been planned.

Following the flight of General Guei, the youth wing of the FPI and vigilantes from ethnic groups aligned with President Gbagbo, including his own Bete ethnic group, often worked in coordination with and enjoyed the clear support of the security forces. These state-sanctioned civilian forces were also responsible for serious abuses including rape and murder.

Victims were overwhelmingly presumed supporters of the RDR, which draws heavily on support from the largely Muslim north. Ivorians from the Dioula ethnic group in the north, Muslims, and foreigners were victimized for their perceived support for the RDR. Supporters of the RDR had taken to the streets, in often violent protests, to demonstrate against the disqualification of their leader, Alassane Ouattara, from running, first in the October presidential elections and later in the December parliamentary contest. As the violence took on religious and ethnic dimensions, security forces began targeting civilians less on the basis of their political affiliation than solely and explicitly on the basis of their religion, ethnic group, and/or perceived nationality. 

The violence surrounding the elections was founded on a trend in political discourse in which the concept of citizenship was central. Three successive presidents-Bédié, Guei, and Gbagbo-made the issue of nationality central to their parties' political platforms. Since 1995, when President Bédié first invoked a conception of "Ivorité," or "Ivorian-ness," there have been several outbreaks of violence against foreigners. An estimated 26 percent of the population of Côte d'Ivoire is made up of immigrants, primarily from Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger. The agricultural sector is heavily reliant upon their labor. In 1999, tensions between ethnic Krumens from south-west Côte d'Ivoire and Burkinabé farmers, who for decades have been farming the coffee, cocoa, and palm nut plantations, resulted in the expulsion of some 8,000 to 12,000 Burkinabés.¹ Nationalist political fervor stoked by politicians has turned popular sentiment in some constituencies against foreigners and, more recently, against northern Ivorians coming from areas bordering Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. 

A January 7, 2001 coup attempt against President Gbagbo's government once again set off a frenzy of attacks against foreigners, when the president implicated foreign nationals from Burkina Faso in the attempt. Following harassment, attacks, and extortion both by vigilante groups and by members of the state security forces, tens of thousands of foreigners, mostly Burkinabés, fled Côte d'Ivoire.

The level of seniority of officers within the state security corps involved in the perpetration of human rights abuses is a cause for concern. Victims often described the presence of officers during operations in which serious abuses were committed and in apparent command. There is no doubt that high-ranking officers were in charge of six army, police, and gendarme bases where hundreds of detainees were tortured. Former detainees often described the presence of officers within police and gendarme bases and of their overseeing and directing the abuse or doing nothing to stop it. Paramilitary gendarmes within the National Gendarme Academy raped women within an open area, and witnesses identified, through their insignia, at least seven officers within the National Police Academy who were involved in sexual abuse of several women. Other officers stepped in to halt some abuses or attempted to do so.

Witnesses frequently described signs of a breakdown of command, in which officers and soldiers argued over whether certain abuses should be committed, or soldiers committed abuses after officers had ordered them not to. Numerous witnesses described an informal realignment of military authority based on ethnicity, instead of seniority. Soldiers and lower officers from President Gbagbo's Bete ethnic group were said to have disobeyed orders from or argued with senior officers originating from other ethnic groups.

Following a flood of international condemnation, Côte d'Ivoire pledged to conduct three official judicial investigations into the October violence: the first into the massacre of fifty-seven men on October 26 (the Charnier de Yopougon); the second into the killing of eighteen people whose bodies were found floating in the Ébrié Lagoon on October 25 and 26; and the third into the case of at least six men found murdered within Blokosso neighborhood on October 26. 

After local and international human rights groups denounced sexual violence perpetrated against women by government forces and state-sanctioned vigilantes and the widespread torture of detainees during the December wave of violence, one official inquiry into rape was conducted but no follow-up action was taken.

Despite overwhelming evidence against members of his security forces and repeated pledges by President Gbagbo to punish individuals responsible for human rights abuses, not one member of the security forces has been arrested and convicted in relation to the incidents of late 2000. In April 2001, eight paramilitary gendarmes were charged with murder in connection with the massacre of the Charnier de Yopougon. They included then Captain Victor Be Kpan, who commanded the gendarme Camp of Abobo where the initial killings occurred, and who was promoted to major after the October election violence. None of the eight, who all denied any involvement in the killings, were arrested or taken into custody. The trial began on July 24, 2001 before a military tribunal inside the gendarmerie's Agban Camp, and on August 3, 2001, all eight gendarmes were acquitted. The judge ruled that the prosecutors had failed to produce sufficient evidence directly linking the gendarmes to the killings. The two survivors of the massacre refused to testify in the trial, citing fears for their safety.

Two brothers, both civilians, were the only people in detention in connection with the election violence; they were arrested in connection with the October 26, 2000, killing of gendarme Lt. Nyobo N'Guessan and were, at this writing, still awaiting trial. Otherwise, President Gbagbo has responded to calls for accountability by making a series of symbolic gestures such as the establishment of a twenty-six member committee to promote national reconciliation, and the designation of November 9, 2000, as a national day of prayer for those killed in the October violence. 

While the international community condemned both the violence surrounding the elections and the lack of full participation in the democratic process, there have been inadequate calls for justice and accountability, except with respect to the massacre at Yopougon. One exception was the decision of the United Nations to establish an international commission of inquiry into the October violence. The commission, which spent two months in Côte d'Ivoire, concluded that serious and systematic human rights violations, which often took on an ethnic dimension, took place during both the October and December election periods. It concluded that members of the security forces, particularly the gendarmes, were responsible for serious violations including the massacre at Yopougon. The commission recommended that those responsible for human rights violations be punished, that further investigations into cases of torture and ill-treatment be carried out, and that the fight against the longstanding culture of impunity within the security forces constitute a top priority for the Ivorian authorities. 

The future of Côte d'Ivoire is in the balance. The much anticipated 2000 elections which were meant to restore the country to democratic rule served to expose both how firmly military impunity had taken root, and how frail democratic foundations had become. The political and social climate remains volatile and characterized by intolerance, xenophobia, and suspicion. The shocking brutality that permeated the election period was the fruit of a dangerous policy of manipulating ethnicity for political gain. Whether the fault-lines of ethnic and religious mistrust exposed during the elections cut deeper into the fabric of Ivorian society, or begin to heal, depends largely on the restoration of the rule of law. The abuses described in this report must be addressed by both the Ivorian government and international community, not with denial and impunity and symbolic gestures, but instead with concrete action.

Human Rights Watch calls on President Gbagbo to direct the justice ministry to promptly investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible for violations of human rights. He must ensure that the security forces work for the protection of all Ivorians and foreigners; not just those citizens loyal to his ethnic group or political party. He must put an end to military impunity and take concrete actions to create a society based on tolerance, social equality, and the rule of law. The international and donor community must use all means possible to press for respect for human rights. To do otherwise will only serve to bring the feared violence and lawlessness of its troubled neighbors ever closer. 

Key Findings

Killings By Members of the Security Forces
In both the October and December waves of violence, members of the security forces gunned down demonstrators, and rounded up opposition supporters and foreigners who they later executed in ditches, fields, in their homes, and within a gendarme base. Members of the paramilitary gendarmes were responsible for the majority of the killings, including those of the fifty-seven men whose bodies were found in the Charnier de Yopougon, and several smaller group killings. Some 170 people died as a result of the October violence, and Human Rights Watch documented forty-two deaths, of which thirty-six were perpetrated by the Security Forces, during the December events. 

Scores of political protesters from all parties were killed when gendarmes, police, and, before the flight of General Guei, the Presidential Guard, indiscriminately opened fire on them as they gathered in their neighborhoods or marched through the streets. On October 24 and 25, the elite Red Brigade within the Presidential Guard opened fire on thousands of demonstrators primarily from the FPI, who had taken to the streets to protest General Guei's annulment of the election. The FPI estimated that approximately sixty of its supporters were killed. At least eighteen bodies later found floating in the Ébrié Lagoon were people thought to have been killed when the Presidential Guard opened up on demonstrators attempting to cross a bridge leading into the city center. 

Much of the killing by the gendarmes in October and December took place in reprisal for the death of one of their members in the clashes. In October, after news spread of a gendarme lieutenant killed while patrolling through the Derrière Rail neighborhood of Abobo, gendarmes from the Gendarme Camp of Abobo went on a killing spree, hunting down and killing some twenty young men they targeted for being RDR supporters, foreigners, or Muslims. In December, a gendarme was killed during clashes with RDR protesters in the Port Bouet II neighborhood of Yopougon. In response gendarmes and police gunned down at least thirteen demonstrators, and later swept through the street with bottles of gasoline setting businesses, houses, and cars on fire. At least three people, including two children, died. 

Sexual Abuse
Both male and female detainees were subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation while in the custody of the gendarmes and police, or by supporters of the FPI in the presence of security forces. Human Rights Watch documented the cases of seven men whose genitals were beaten and/or burned, of eleven women who had been raped, and at least twelve other women who had been penetrated with objects, beaten in the genital area, or sexually humiliated. There was considerably more sexual abuse against women during the December wave of election violence than in October.

In early December, four women detained within the National Gendarme Academy were repeatedly gang-raped for two days. Several women were also gang-raped by some ten gendarmes and later by several militant FPI youths on the grounds of a technical institute in Cocody. Police cadets and officers within the National Police Academy subjected six women detainees to degrading treatment and in at least three cases forced women to lie naked in front of a group of officers who then inserted sand and police truncheons into their vaginas. One of these women was in the early stages of pregnancy and suffered a miscarriage during her days in detention. 

Detention and Torture by Members of the Police and Gendarmerie 
After detaining hundreds of RDR militants, Muslims, and foreigners, the police and gendarmes routinely used extreme forms of brutality and torture, resulting in the deaths of several young men. At least fifteen young men "disappeared" after detention. Numerous mid-and high-level RDR activists were tortured and later imprisoned without due process. Hospital and clinic workers reported treating hundreds of victims for lacerations, broken bones, burns, concussions, and head fractures sustained while in custody. 

Civilians were detained after being stopped on the street and asked for their identification, dragged out of their homes and workplaces, or seized while participating in demonstrations. Scores of civilians who were uninvolved politically were captured exclusively and explicitly on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or their perceived nationality. 

Scores of detainees were beaten with iron bars, electrical cable, ropes, belts, truncheons, chains, dog collars, bike chains, gun butts, and tree branches; burned with cigarettes, pieces of burning plastic, irons, and scalding pan lids; doused with cold water and forced to swim in dirty open sewers; forced to walk back and forth on their knees; made to lie under and look into the sun; forced to walk on burning clothes and tires; tear-gassed at close quarters and sprayed in the eyes, mouth, and genitals with tear gas and mace; forced to fight with each other, eat excrement, and drink their own blood, and threatened with death or subjected to mock executions. The most notorious centers for detention were the National Police Academy, the National Gendarme Academy, and the Agban Gendarme Camp.

"Disappearances"
While Human Rights Watch documented no cases of "disappearance" following the December violence, at least fifteen civilian men, including several foreigners, were captured or last seen and believed to be in custody around the time of the October elections and remain unaccounted for, "disappeared." Most of those who have "disappeared" were detained at their home or in their immediate neighborhood by men in uniform. In Abobo, nine Dioula men, most from the same extended family, were detained by police and taken away in a public transport vehicle. In Treichville, a wounded man discharged from a hospital never returned home and was believed to have been taken into custody. In Derrière Rail, a twenty-eight-year-old man was dragged from his home by gendarmes in front of his mother. In Abobo, a twenty-five-year-old man from Burkina Faso was captured by a uniformed policeman and two armed men in civilian dress and has never been found. Hospital workers and morgue attendants described repeated visits by family members trying to locate their loved ones. The badly decomposed, unclaimed, and unidentified bodies of forty-five victims of political violence were buried in Abidjan in the evening hours of April 1, 2001, and were speculated to include some of those classified as "disappeared."

Assaults and Threats on Wounded and those Assisting the Wounded
On numerous occasions, gendarmes, police, and FPI supporters impeded the work of local Red Cross and other medical personnel trying to treat and evacuate the wounded. In October, a private car carrying a wounded Dioula youth and his doctor was stopped by a mob of FPI supporters in Gbagbo T-shirts. The mob beat up all the occupants, including the wounded man and his doctor, and later set fire to the car. In December, an ambulance carrying five wounded RDR supporters was stopped in Cocody by some twenty gendarmes backed up by a large group of FPI supporters. The gendarmes ordered the wounded to get out of the ambulance, threatening to kill them and the ambulance personnel if they refused to do so. One of the women patients was then dragged away and raped by at least two of the FPI youths in full view of the gendarmes. In at least three other instances, gendarmes and police detained Red Cross ambulances and threatened to kill the wounded RDR supporters inside. At least one government hospital refused to treat wounded RDR supporters.

Religious Persecution
Several mosques were attacked and burned by FPI mobs, while others were the object of police and gendarme round-up operations. Muslims were often targeted for detention and in some cases extrajudicially executed on account of their religion. Once in detention Muslims were often insulted and forced to break Muslim rules. This was particularly true in December during the holy month of Ramadan. A few churches also came under attack by RDR mobs, resulting in destruction and loss of property. 

In October, the Aicha Niangon-Sud mosque in Yopougon was completely destroyed after being attacked by some 200 FPI youths. The police called to protect the mosque arrested the thirty-three Muslims who had remained inside and then stood by while the mosque was ransacked and burned. 

In December, seventy-four Muslims and their iman who had gathered for afternoon prayers in the Avocatier mosque were rounded up and detained for several days within the National Police Academy of Cocody. In a similar operation, some twenty-five Muslims and their imam were arrested by police as they inspected the damage caused to the Sofogia Mosque after it was burned by a FPI mob shortly before.

While in detention, groups of Muslims were doused with urine and dirty water, forced to break their fast, refused the right to pray, or told to pray and then beaten as they bowed down. Elderly Muslims and imams were forced to pull out their facial hair and watch as sacred Korans were destroyed by police.

Mob Violence
Fighting between rival militants from the FPI and RDR parties resulted in numerous deaths. With militants from both sides armed with wooden sticks, machetes, iron bars, nail studded clubs, rocks, and in a few cases hunting and automatic rifles, political protests turned into pitched battles between militants of both sides, and degenerated into ethnic and religiously motivated mob violence. In many cases, paramilitary gendarmes and police actively sided with FPI mobs or stood by while they committed serious abuses such as rape and murder. While militants from the FPI and RDR spontaneously took to the streets, their leaders did little to try to rein in their supporters.

The most serious of these attacks occurred in October within Blokosso neighborhood, an opposition stronghold inhabited by ethnic Ébriés from the south. During the attack a mob of opposition supporters killed at least six unidentified young men. In Yopougon, FPI supporters burned alive a Muslim man. In Anonkoua, another Ébrié neighborhood, a man in a Muslim robe was attacked with a hammer and seriously wounded, and a carpenter of Malian descent on his way home from work lost his left leg and was blinded after a brutal attack. In December, an RDR supporter who had fled into the neighborhood to escape gunfire was hacked to death by Ébrié youths in full view of at least three gendarmes. 

In October, RDR supporters in Anyama burned alive a civil servant, beat up FPI supporters, looted homes, and ransacked a local market. In Abobo, groups of RDR supporters forced their way into the homes of opposition supporters and went through the streets looking for and brutalizing non-Dioulas. In December a large group of RDR supporters cut the throat of a municipal treasury official in Treichville.

1 Radio France International, Paris, November 26, l999.