ABIDJAN, Sept 25 (AFP) - In Ivory Coast, shaken by an army mutiny, the
official media are providing little hard news on the crisis, three foreign
radio stations are cut, and the international press is described as an
enemy.
No news is good news, it appears.
The uprising was quashed in Abidjan on September 19 at the cost of 270
dead and 300 wounded, according to an official tally.
But the rebel soldiers also seized the west African nation's second
city, Bouake, in the centre, where they have since been fighting government
troops,and Korhogo, the main town in the predominantly Muslim north.
The government of President Laurent Gbagbo described the uprising as an
attempted coup backed by an unspecified "rogue state" in the region which
had sent in mercenaries with heavy weapons. On Wednesday, Notre Voie, the
newspaper of Gbagbo's ruling party, identified Blaise Compaore, president
of neighbouring Burka Faso, as the "mastermind" of the rebellion.
On the television news, the mood is patriotic, with the country under
attack from the outside. It runs declarations that life is returning to
normal, and quotes from contented Ivorians.
Missing are reports of the burning down of thousands of shacks in shanty
towns inhabited largely by immigrants, many of them from Burkina Faso, and
little is broadcast on the fighting in Bouake, where the rebels have
managed to hold off the regular army for a week, or the situation on
Korhogo, where sporadic shooting is apparently taking place from time to
time.
On Tuesday, state radio allowed politicians known for their extremist
views to call for a demonstration against France because its ambassador is
sheltering opposition figure Alassouane Ouattara, a former prime minister,
an arrangement that has the blessing of the government.
Several thousand demonstrators duly turned out Wednesday to chant in
front of the French mission, some of them going on to the nearby Burkina
Faso consulate, where they damaged the solid-metal entrance gate and the
windows of a guard-post.
For the first three days of the crisis, everyone was listening to the
BBC, Radio France Internationale (RFI) or Gabon-based Africa No 1.
The FM broadcasts of all three stations went off the air on Sunday,
creating suspicion that the government had pulled the plug on them,
especially as they had been giving air-time to rebel spokesmen in Bouake
and Korhogo.
Acting Communications Minister Lia Bi Douayaoua told AFP the same day
that he had given no instructions to cut those transmissions, and said his
technicians would check to see what the problem was.
"The government is acutely embarrassed," he said. "That sort of thing
gives a terrible impression of Ivory Coast."
On Wednesday, the three stations were still off the air.
The huge variety of newspapers available in Abidjan are back in the
kiosks, each banner headline striving to outshine the competition.
They are feasting on the foreign plot theory, and some are turning
against the foreign media.
"BBC, RFI, AFP, the other adversaries of Ivory Coast," headlined Notre
Voie, the newspaper of Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front, on Monday, accusing
them of waging a disinformation campaign "with the aim of weakening the
government".
"We see what the French journalists are writing, and it disquietens us,"
Lucien Tape Koulou, the head of National newspaper, declared on state radio
the following day.
His newspaper also on Tuesday, printed the headline: "RFI, BBC, Africa
No 1, AFP: the permanent danger" over a story which named several foreign
correspondents as having chosen "the aggressor's side".
On Wednesday, another newspaper described foreign correspondents as
dancing vultures.
An innocent Spanish tourist strolling in Abidjan got the fright of his
life on Monday when around 50 young Ivorians decided he was an RFI
correspondent and came close to lynching him.
Two plain-clothes policemen saved his life, whisking him into a nearby
police post, but several dozen of the mob followed them back and tried to
push into the post, an AFP correspondent saw.
Two newspapers have disappeared from the kiosks: Le Patriote and Le
Liberal, both close to the party of Ouattara, who has accused the
paramilitary gendarmerie police of trying to kill him on September 19.
The editor in chief of Le Patriote said they had decided to suspend
publication after repeated telephone threats against their journalists, one
of whom was beaten up.
******************
ABIDJAN, Sept 25 (AFP) - Ivory Coast security agents have "kidnapped" three
opposition politicians and raided homes in the wake of an army rebellion
which began last week, party activists and family members said Wednesday.
The three are members of the Rally of Republicans (RDR) party, headed
by the country's main opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, a source who
asked not to be named told AFP.
The source identified them as Ali Keita, the deputy spokesman of the
RDR, and two other officials, Timoco Yade Coulibaly, the mayor of the
northern town of Sinematiali, and a Mrs Camara.
Heavily armed squads of gendarmes -- police under the defence ministry --
"kidnapped" the three on Monday, said the source, adding: "We have since
had no news of them."
Ouattara, who comes from the Muslim north of the country, has taken
refuge in the French embassy in the economic capital Abidjan, where the
army put down what the government has branded a coup bid launched on
September 19.
Keita's wife, Coulibaly Fatimata, told AFP that the family home was
raided by gendarmes at 9:30 am (0930 GMT) on Wednesday.
"We've been told that a heavily armed team went to the house to raid
it this morning," Fatimata said, adding that "nobody was in the house at
the time.
She had no news of her husband since he was arrested on Monday.
Ouattara has said gendarmes want to assassinate him, and saw his house
set ablaze last Thursday, the day mutinous soldiers launched the uprising
at a cost of more than 270 lives and 300 wounded in Abidjan, according to
official figures.
Rebel troops on Wednesday still held two other towns, Bouake in the
centre of the country's cocoa-growing belt and Korhogo in the north near
the border with Burkina Faso.
Timoco Yade, who is on the board of a large Ivorian bank as well as an
RDR politician, was taken from his home on a 4x4 vehicle, his daughter said
Wednesday.
She added that she and her mother were also driven away from their home
in the plush Cocody district, then left out on the street.
On Monday, Yade himself told AFP by telephone that his house was under
attack by people who were "breaking everything."
"They're trying to get in," he said, whispering.
"I think it's the military. I'm in the dark, with my wife. My daughter's
in another room. You hear? They're breaking everything."
The correspondent could hear clearly what sounded like someone breaking
down a door. The attack came as the streets of Abidjan were deserted --
except for security forces -- because of an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew.
RDR activists said Wednesday that they had been driven
underground, "almost living clandestine lives," as one put it, since the
armed rebellion began last week.
President Laurent Gbagbo has blamed an unidentified neighbouring
country for being behind the unrest, and his ruling party has accused
Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore of wanting to destabilise Ivory
Coast.
The Burkinabe government has strongly denied this allegation.
Since the late 1990s, increasing xenophobia has wracked Ivory Coast,
whose prosperity and stability had attracted many immigrant workers from
neighbouring countries, and affected the country's politics.
Ouattara, a former prime minister who then became a top official with
the World Bank, was denied any political role by successive governments on
his return.
They said he was Burkinabe or had used Burkina Faso nationality. Only
this year did Ouattara recover his Ivorian nationality.
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