UN official urges more int’l efforts to curb ethnic violence in CAR

 UN official urges more int’l efforts to curb ethnic violence in CAR

(UN)

The Director of UN humanitarian operations on Friday said the international community has failed in its responsibility for the Central African Republic (CAR) that is gripped by ethnic cleansing and heavy casualties.

Operations Director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), John Ging told reporters that rival Christian and Muslim militias were stoking inter-communal violence and people are losing their humanity in unprecedented sectarian violence.

Ging, who just came back from Boda town in southern CAR, said he was also concerned by a profoundly worrying trend shift in the communities as people are now blaming Christians and Muslims instead of simply ‘armed group’ as they did before.

Citing a stark example, he said in Boda, Christian leaders were urging the minority Muslim villagers to be evacuated, stoking intolerance.

“People are asking to be moved from their own communities.

“Meanwhile, in strife-riven Bossangoa, all Muslims are gone now, with some 2,000 people having fled on their own or evacuated with the help of the UN.

“This is a measure of our failure as an international community, it is a stop-gap; a solution that is not really a solution because these people will, at some point, have to return home,’’ Ging noted.

Fighting in the CAR has taken on an increasingly sectarian nature since December when Christian anti-balaka (anti-machete) overthrew the Muslim Seleka rebel government.

The reprisal clashes have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people, and rendered 2.2 million in need of humanitarian aid.

“This ethnic and religious dimension has resulted in the segmentation and segregation of communities.

“Ordinary people are being radicalised, manipulated and made to believe that segregation is the solution to the crisis’’, Ging said, emphasising the abject fear in which the various communities are now living.

Ging noted that the nearly 5,000 AU troops and about 2,000 French troops could not provide country-wide protection.

“The only way people can even begin to contemplate rebuilding their lives is if there is real security,” he emphasized.

While urging a focus on the lack of funding, Ging pointed out only 123 million dollars of the 500 million dollar-appeal had been met, and the rainy season is compounding the dire humanitarian situation.

“It is not enough to have a discussion about what’s right or what’s wrong in principle; it’s what are we going to do in practice, so it is our duty to protect these people,’ Ging noted.

(Xinhua/NAN)