CÔTE D’IVOIRE: A COUNTRY “DYING AWAY” UNDER FRENCH OCCUPATION

By Ohoupa SESSEGNON

Côte d’Ivoire has been under the occupation of the French army for the past seventeen months. This army which has actively helped to overthrow President Gbagbo and replace him by Dramane Ouattara has not been able to control its local collaborators called “The Republican Force of Côte d’Ivoire”.   

This illiterate, untrained, barbaric and ethnic based group of thugs and mystics recruited by Dramane Ouattara and Soro Guillaume, and made mainly of Ivorian northerners and Burkinabes, are killing on a daily basis Ivoirians, Men and Women considered pro-Gbagbos, with the lucky ones mostly ending up in prisons or in concentration camps situated in Abidjan and in the North of the Country (evidence available).

The opposition Media is totally muzzled. Most pro-Gbagbo newspapers are unreasonably suspended with attacks targeted to their headquarters. The autocratic and repressive regime put in place by the French army and led by a man who is alien to the history of the Country is setting the conditions of censorships through threats and terror. 

We believe that Freedom of information is such an essential element in a democratic world that it cannot be suppressed under any circumstance. The level of Democracy in a Country is measured by the level freedom of expression given to the media. It then appears absurd to us how the opposition newspapers are muzzled in Côte d’Ivoire under the leadership of Dramane Ouattara and his allies.

We think that Ivorians have seriously been traumatised by the bombs from the French and UN forces, and are still living in fear with the cloud of an unavoidable coup d’etat hanging over their heads.  We therefore think they deserve to have access to a true, diversified and fair account of what has happened and what is happening to them and what the root causes of their misfortune are.  This, we believe can only be possible through a freedom of expression given to the media in general.

Ivorians in their majority have witnessed the capture by the French, American and the UN forces of their democratically elected President. The historical date of 11 April 2011 will forever remain in the memory of the Ivorians. 

President Gbagbo, the democratically elected President of Côte d’Ivoire was captured, kidnapped and deported to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after spending months incarcerated in the north of the Country in inhuman conditions. 

This is a yelling act of injustice that needs to be exposed. It’s unacceptable and unfair that those who killed through a rebellion and are still killing remain free with military ranks won through blood shedding while the democratically elected President is being illegally detained.  

The Secretary General of the Rally of the Democrats (RDR), Dramane Ouattara’s Party, the current leading Party in Côte d’Ivoire, has said during an interview in a local newspaper that “anyone opposing Ouattara will be sent to the cemetery just as  thousands other Ivorians who have done so.”  It’s then crystal clear to us that the regime of the RDR is not ready to move to the political phase of the crisis, which therefore makes reconciliation impossible.

We call on The International Community, the regional Organisation (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to seriously look into the Ivorian situation before it’s too late. 

We call on our African media houses, our African journalists to direct their lenses, their pens and microphones toward this country that steadily advance toward the worst ever...