Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2005 - Cote d'Ivoire

Continued threats against MIDH¹⁷

On 10 January 2005, persons who introduced themselves as police officers entered the Abidjan offices of the Ivorian Movement for Human Rights (Mouvement ivoirien pour les droits humains – MIDH), accompanied by Mr. Ted Azduma Manamassé, a former member of the organisation. These "officers" threatened the persons in the office and confiscated their cell phones. At the request of Mr. Amourlaye Touré, MIDH president, who had been alerted by one of his colleagues, officers from the local police station came and arrested the aggressors. The defendants were supposed to be taken to the Public Prosecutor's office the next day, but were all released during the night.

MIDH lodged a complaint. By the end of 2005, the legal proceedings were still pending.

In addition, a slander campaign was launched against MIDH after the organisation had published a report, on 26 January 2005, denouncing the serious human rights violations perpetrated by the parties to the conflict.¹⁸ On 28 January 2005, Mr. Blé Goudé, director of the Pan-African Congress of Young Patriots (Congrès panafricain des jeunes patriotes – COJEP), loyal to Mr. Laurent Gbagbo, President of the Republic, reacted to this report in an interview on Radio Côte d'Ivoire, saying that it was provocative and encouraging the Ivorians "not to react". The next day, Mr. Touré received an anonymous letter warning MIDH members that they should consider themselves "on the way to hell". The authors of the threatening letter accused MIDH of "only worrying about the fate of the people in the north" and indicated that MIDH should "repair the injustice done to the dead in the west of the country". Mr. Touré was informed that the MIDH head office might be targeted with a "punitive expedition" and that an attack against him was being prepared.

On 21 March 2005, Mr. Touré received more threats by email from people who indicated that they were monitoring his movements and spying on him. The e-mail reads: "In our next letter (if you are still alive!) we will give you the list of your gang and the holes where you seem to be hiding in [...]". MIDH members were accused of being foreigners and descendants of immigrants and were threatened with "extermination".

On the night of 23 to 24 July 2005, Mr. Touré's home was attacked by members of the Ivorian defence and security forces who shot a bullet against the gate during a raid they were carrying out in his neighbourhood. While leaving, they declared that they would return later.

MIDH and its president were also targeted by a defamation campaign after Mr. Touré, on 27 September 2005, had spoken on the German public radio Deutsche Welle about the situation in Côte d'Ivoire after 30 October 2005,¹⁹ and about the need to secure the electoral environment. Mr. Pascal Affi N'Guessan, president of the Ivorian Popular Party (Front populaire ivoirien – FPI), the ruling party, accused MIDH of being a "ramification of G7", the coalition of Ivorian opposition parties.

On 25 October 2005, a member of COJEP compared the MIDH activities to those of an armed rebellion and threatened to lodge a complaint against the organisation for "collusion" during a conference on human rights in a period of crisis, organised by the Ivorian Association for the Development of Rights (Association ivoirienne pour le développement des droits).

By the end of 2005, there was still no reaction to the complaint lodged by MIDH in 2003 following the attack on the association's headquarters by three armed men who had violently beaten an employee.

[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]

17. See Annual Report 2004 and Urgent Appeals CIV 001/0205/OBS 009 and 009.1.

18. See report published jointly with FIDH entitled La reprise des hostilités en Côte d'Ivoire en novembre 2004. Un obstacle à la réconciliation, à la paix et au développement, January 2005.

19. Elections were supposed to be held on that date, but were cancelled by President Gbagbo on 27 September 2005 and are to be held by 31 October 2006.