The United Nations imposed sanctions on Tuesday on three political leaders accused of blocking a peace process in war-divided Ivory Coast, where 12 villagers were massacred in fresh violence this week.
Military and hospital officials said the victims were shot and hacked to death on Monday in an apparent grudge attack over a pay dispute, not far from the western town of Guiglo, from where U.N. peacekeeping troops were evacuated last month.
The U.N. Security Council imposed travel and asset freezes on Charles Ble Goude and Eugene Djue, who led young supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo in four days of riots last month against U.N. bases and personnel in the government-held south.
The sanctions were also aimed against Fofie Kouakou, a commander of rebel forces occupying the north of the country, whose spokesman Sidiki Konate branded the measures as unjust.
Fears of violence abated
“It’s a bad and cowardly decision which doesn’t bring the required solution to the problem, which (should be) to punish those responsible for the events in January,” Konate told Reuters by telephone.
The sanctions were approved by all 15 Security Council members, said Greek ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, who chairs the council’s committee on Ivory Coast sanctions.
The prospect of sanctions against those judged to be blocking efforts to bring peace to the world’s top cocoa producer, split in two by a 2002-2003 civil war, had raised fears of fresh violence following last month’s riots.
The action came hours after Ivory Coast’s national soccer team beat Nigeria 1-0 in the semi-finals of the African Cup of Nations. The mood on Abidjan’s streets was one of celebration, with supporters flying flags from the windows of cars, honking their horns in procession around the streets.
Volatile west
The news of Monday’s massacre near Guiglo underscored concerns over possible fresh violence in the west in the absence of U.N. peacekeepers who were forced to withdraw from four bases after attacks against them by rioters last month.
About 7,000 U.N. peacekeepers and 4,000 French troops maintain a fragile cease-fire in Ivory Coast.
The U.N. mission chief, Pierre Schori, has said security in the west must be improved to allow the U.N. and other humanitarian organizations to go back to help Ivorians fleeing violence and Liberian refugees also sheltering there.
“The Special Representative (Schori) is very worried about what is happening in the west. The situation can’t stay like this. The troops must return before the (relief) NGOs can go back,” U.N. military spokesman Gilles Combarieu told Reuters.
He said he had no details about Monday’s attack. One local Ivorian military official, who asked not to be identified, described it as “a settling of scores” following a dispute between a cocoa planter and his workers over pay.
The western cocoa-growing region around Guiglo is a tinderbox of ethnic tension and land disputes where scores of people were shot, hacked or burned to death last year.
Anti-U.N. riots
Last month’s anti-U.N. riots paralyzed Abidjan and other southern cities as young pro-Gbagbo militants protested violently against what they called foreign meddling.
Youth leaders Ble Goude and Djue have shrugged off the threat of sanctions. Ble Goude had previously called on his supporters not to react to sanctions against him.
Combarieu said on Tuesday there was no sign of protesters outside the U.N. mission’s Abidjan headquarters which rioters had besieged last month, throwing stones and petrol bombs.
Ble Goude and Djue have accused the U.N. and foreign mediators of infringing Ivory Coast’s sovereignty by trying to apply a U.N. peace plan to reunite the government-held south and rebel north and hold elections by the end of October.
On Monday, the Security Council decided to move a small mechanized unit of 200 U.N. troops from Liberia to Ivory Coast.
