This is Rwanda all over again.
Killing machete style, lynching,
mutilations, burnings, public announcements, threats to those providing
safety to the hunted and last but not least, not letting people leave
the town ALIVE. If you don't know what happened in Rwanda, I
recommend you watch Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April
to get an idea of how
it went down and what is probably going down in the Central African Republic (CAR). It is happening all over again in a different location,
except it went from being a tribal cleanse to a religious cleanse. Its
sad that we are not hearing enough about this issue, why is the help slow to come?
There were lessons learned from Rwanda, why are these lessons not being
applied here? These guys are not operating as the government but they
are definitely a force to be reckon with, why aren't there any orders
for their arrest? Why are they free of worry out in the open and not underground? Soo many questions and very little action.
So this weekend as you celebrate valentine's day with your loved ones,
please make Dua for the people of CAR. Allah alone knows how this will
turn out, but we pray for their safety in these trying times. May Allah
accept the souls of the ones that have passed, into his Janna and protect
and heal the souls of the ones left behind.
Read the full article below by David Smith from the Guardian
Peacekeepers prevent crammed cars from leaving Bangui for fear of attack, and evidence emerges of village massacre. Thousands of Muslims tried to flee the capital of the
Central African Republic
(CAR) on Friday, only for their mass convoy of cars and trucks to be
turned back as crowds of angry Christians taunted: "We're going to kill
you all."
The drama unfolded as Amnesty International said it had
uncovered evidence of a fresh massacre in a village where the sole
surviving Muslim was an orphaned girl aged about 11, and France said it
would send an extra 400 peacekeeping troops.
Some cars were
crammed with as many as 10 people as the convoy made its way through
Bangui, the second such attempt to escape in a week, the Associated
Press reported. Christians gathered along the road to shout abuse and
threats.
The convoy was turned back because African peacekeepers
feared it would come under attack in some volatile parts of Bangui. The
desperate procession was halted in the Miskine neighbourhood, where one
vehicle tumbled into a ditch on the side of the road.
On the
orders of a Burundian captain, the peacekeepers went from vehicle to
vehicle instructing everyone to return to a local mosque, according to
an AP journalist at the scene.
Lieutenant Rosana Nsengimana, of
the African peacekeeping force known as Misca, said: "The convoy
escorted by Burundian forces returned to its departure point because of a
problem in a neighbourhood on the north end of the city where the
Muslims would have had to pass through."
The neighbourhood in
question witnessed fresh fighting on Friday with at least one person
killed in a grenade attack by Christian militiamen, according to
witnesses at a nearby mosque. French peacekeepers had to rescue two
other severely injured people from an baying crowd that had set tyres on
fire and was shouting anti-Muslim and anti-French slogans.
Muslims
have increasingly been targeted by Christians who took up arms against a
mostly Muslim rebel group known as the Seleka, which seized power in a
coup a year ago,
committing scores of atrocities along the way. The Christian militias, known as the anti-balaka, seem intent on what they perceive as vengeance.
Amnesty has
warned
that a campaign of ethnic cleansing is causing a Muslim exodus. On
Friday Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty, described
the scene at a village in the north-west of the country.
"We saw
bodies littering the streets," she said. "Several of them had been
partially burned. Others had been partly eaten by dogs and other
animals. One was the body of a little baby who could not have been more
than seven or eight months old. We saw more than 20 bodies but we think
that there were several more.
She continued: "All the houses of
the Muslim population had been burned or looted and in one of the houses
I found a little girl of about 11. She was the only Muslim survivor of
the village: the others had either fled or been killed. She was
crouching in a corner. She had been hiding there since the day of the
massacre. She had not eaten or drunk anything. She was terrified and
could not stand at all.
"She said that her father had been killed
and her mother had been killed. She was not speaking very much. There
had not been any peacekeepers there at all even though this place was a
place that had already seen confrontation between anti-balaka and Seleka
forces earlier."
The anti-balaka have stepped up their attacks in
recent weeks, forcing tens of thousands of Muslims to flee for their
lives. Most head to neighbouring Chad, which is predominantly Muslim.
There have been almost daily killings of those who could not escape, their bodies
mutilated and dragged through the streets despite the presence of peacekeepers.
Muslims
made up about 15% of the CAR's 4.6 million population before the
present crisis. Now entire neighbourhoods of Bangui are empty. Only one
mosque remains in the town of Yaloke, where previously there had been
eight, according to Human Rights Watch. "The anti-balaka militias are
increasingly organised and using language that suggests their intent is
to eliminate Muslim residents," HRW said this week.
Medecins Sans
Frontieres said 1,000 people – mostly Muslim – were in danger in the
south-west town of Carnot. "Armed men have announced that they intend to
track down and kill all the city's Muslims," it said. "Anyone who hides
Muslims is also at risk."
Read the rest of the article
here...
