‘Leave so that we can kill all the Muslims’
Stephan Hofstatter and photographer James Oatway report from Boda in the Central African Republic, where a community is surrounded by militias bent on their execution
EVERY morning, Yassir Baradine meets his troops for a briefing at his militia’s headquarters — a wooden table under a shelter on Boda’s main road.
He writes a report of the previous night’s events: shots fired at the enclave; a hand grenade lobbed into a back yard; two houses destroyed. Then he deploys his men. One is nicknamed Al Kanto, after a comedian from Chad, another Baboujasse, who was a feared local Seleka rebel commander. Then there is Coul Chan, a French rapper.
They patrol armed with truncheons, whips and machetes, one inscribed with the words Allahu Akbar (God is great).
Last week, one of Baradine’s men, Amadou Bakari, ventured 5m beyond a small stream, the enclave’s eastern boundary, to investigate reports of anti-balaka spotted in the nearby bushes. He was shot in the chest.
“They want to kill all of us,” said Baradine. “We have to leave before we all die.”
Boda, a small town six hours’ drive from the Central African Republic capital of Bangui, lies in gold and diamond country. It is also the centre of an ethnic cleansing pogrom that has turned into an orgy of religious hatred. It was sparked by a coup on March 24 last year, mostly by Muslim Seleka rebels who toppled president François Bozizé in a battle that cost the lives of 15 South African soldiers.
Since then, the country has descended into chaos. Seleka rebels terrorised the local
We can’t go to the market to buy food. If we aren’t evacuated soon we will all die
population, looting, murdering and raping, sometimes together with local Muslims.
On December 5, anti-balaka self-defence militia attacked Seleka positions in Bangui and Bossangoa, a town to the north near Bozizé’s home village.
Aid workers recall the horror of seeing bodies strewn for kilometres along Bangui’s main access road. After French troops restored order, the rebels began withdrawing from regional towns. In Boda, they fled in the dead of night on January 28, distributing weapons to Muslims on the way out. The next day the Christians threw a street party.
Who fired the first shot depends on whom you talk to.
Christians said the Muslims panicked when a partygoer ventured too close to their neighbourhood, prompting them to send out a raiding party.
Muslims said anti-balaka climbed into a tree and took pot shots at them, killing eight and sparking retaliatory attacks.
Either way, the result was five days of blood-letting.
Red Cross officials said 108 Christians and an estimated 400 Muslims were killed.
In the Christian quarter alone, 928 houses were destroyed. Large swathes of Muslim houses forming a no-man’s land around the enclave were also razed.
The arrival of French troops on February 5 put an end to the carnage. Now 10 000 Muslims are trapped, starving and running out of life-saving drugs, including antiretrovirals, inside an enclave less than 1km². They are surrounded by murderous bands of anti-balaka.
Widow Alima Idrissa lives with several families in the yard of a wealthy gold merchant who fled to Chad. Several empty beds in the house belong to Muslims who were killed. Her breast milk for her emaciated five-monthold son, Amadou, has dried up and all her possessions are gone. “We had 20 cattle but they ate everything,” she said. “Now we have nothing.”
Imam Ali Bouba said: “We live in a prison. We can’t go to our fields. We can’t go to the diamond sites. We can’t go to the market to buy food. If we aren’t evacuated soon we will all die.”
The Christian part of town is crawling with anti-balaka. In a marketplace behind the Catholic church, they openly sell dagga. One puffs on a giant cone-shaped spliff.
Armed with hunting rifles, machetes and ropes, they wear an array of talismans called grigri — pouches, vials and horns containing a magic potion to shield them from bullets and machete blows.
A female anti-balaka has a small cloven hoof around her neck, said to give the wearer shape-shifting powers.
Everywhere the message is the same: they want the peacekeepers out so they can massacre the Muslims.
“The Muslims did many bad things. People saw them catch two women and three children running near the market. When we drove them back the next day, we found their body parts all over the ground,” said one of their leaders, Dieu Grand Poumayassi.
He claims to have 200 local fighters under his command.
An anti-balaka sitting in the shade of a tree near the ruins of the church wants the French to go “so we can kill all the Muslims”. Another, with an AK47 slung over his shoulder, does not want to be interviewed.
A diamond dealer with 100 miners working for him says the Seleka poisoned relations between Muslims and Christians. “Before, we did business together. When the Seleka came, they pointed out my house to them. They stole 351 stones worth 14million francs. I lost everything.”
In a village a few kilometres from Boda, Muslim raiders destroyed several houses, including a mud-brick church.
“They threw petrol bombs at every house with a thatched roof,” said 43-year-old farmer Prosperee Zondwane. “That’s why I hate Muslims.” Every night, anti-balaka youths yell obscenities across the valley, parodying the Muslim call to prayer. Most Muslims here want to escape, but cannot leave for fear of being shot.
Captain Benoit, who commands the French military base overlooking the town, says his men are not mandated to provide armed escorts. “Our job is to protect them here. That’s it.”
Disarming the anti-balaka does not appear to be high on anyone’s agenda either. The countryside is crawling with militia standing in small, sullen groups or piled high on bakkies.
Their raiding parties roam from village to village, looking for Muslims to massacre.
This is the reality of ethnic cleansing. Every Muslim in the west of the country is either dead, has fled or been repatriated, or lives in an enclave like Boda, too terrified to move.