More than four months after Islamist rebels seized control of the Christian-majority Central African Republic (CAR), Christians remain vulnerable to atrocities and the threat of imposition of Islamic law.
Rebel groups and Islamist mercenaries from Chad and Sudan joined forces in December 2012 to form a militant coalition called Seleka, which took the capital, Bangui, March 24 and sent then-President Francois Bozize into exile in Cameroon. Seleka Islamist leader Michel Djotodia took over as president.
“It is clear, according to our research, that it is Christians who have been suffering under Seleka rule and Muslims have been profiting,” Lewis Mudge of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, adding that Seleka agents “have not hesitated to attack Christian places of worship.”
Mudge confirmed that Christian fears about the intentions of the new leaders are not unfounded. Djotodia made a pledge to impose sharia (Islamic law) in a 2012 request for support from the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The request was in an April 17, 2012, letter addressed to the OIC and signed by Djotodia, who denies writing it.
“God willing and we come to Bangui; we will put in place a regime to apply Islamic sharia law,” Djotodia wrote in the letter, marked confidential, in which he requests material and financial support to overthrow the government of Bozize. “Even if we fail to hunt Bozize, we will transform a part of the Central African Republic, Chad and Darfur into a new Islamic Republic.”
Muslims in Sudan’s Darfur region and Chad support the CAR rebels’ aims, Djotodia wrote. When Catholic and evangelical leaders chanced upon a copy of the letter and forwarded it to the self-appointed president, he denied writing it, according to sources in CAR.
With Seleka attacking priests, pastors, nuns, church buildings and other Christian institutions, the letter brought tensions to a head. The leader of CAR’s Evangelical Alliance (EA), Nicolas Guerekoyame, is part of the National Transitional Council created to act in place of the dissolved parliament; he and other leaders of the EA fired off a letter to Djotodia on May 10.
“The various atrocities that preceded, accompanied and followed Seleka’s rise to power have been specifically aimed at the Christian population,” said the letter, signed by Guerekoyame and EA leaders Michel Gbegbe and Anatole Banga. “Churches and Christian institutions have been desecrated and plundered, priests and pastors have been assaulted and nuns raped.”
The letter added that Seleka’s actions have been characterized by “massive and unprecedented violations of human rights in the form of large-scale looting … killings and murders, threats and intimidation, abductions, torture and summary executions, rape of women including nuns, desecration of churches and religious institutions and violence against servants of God (priests and pastors in particular).”
Guerekoyame was arrested Aug. 6 for criticizing the government from the pulpit at a church in Bangui, in spite of the immunity he is supposed to enjoy as a member of the National Transitional Council. He was released later that day.
There have been several reports that agents of the new CAR government selectively attack Christians, their villages and churches while sparing Muslims, who account for less than 15 percent of the population of about 4.5 million people.
Godfrey Yogarajah, executive director of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Religious Liberty Commission, called Aug. 15 for an immediate end to the breakdown of law and order, saying in a statement that the assaults “highlight the targeting of Christians.”
Yogarajah condemned the selective attack on Christians and churches and called on the international community, including the global Church, to rally around suffering CAR Christians and give them support.
Djotodia has claimed that the atrocities are being carried out not by Seleka but by elements beyond his control.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are more than 206,000 displaced people within the country and 63,000 others that have fled to neighboring countries.
Mudge said that “the current situation in Central Africa Republic is fragile, and the humanitarian crisis verges on a catastrophe.” Neighborhoods in Bangui, he said, “continue to be attacked and looted by Seleka; villages in the provinces are not spared as civilians are killed and homes are plundered and burned.”
Although CAR has suffered sporadic violence and a spate of military coups since independence from France in 1960, observers describe the latest violence as the worst ever.
(MS)
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