Reports of abuses by the violent Islamists who were driven out of northern Mali’s major towns have been widely decried. But according to two prominent human rights groups, executions and other rights violations were also perpetrated by the Malian army, as civilians fell victim to violence by both sides.
“People are very frightened and they don’t feel safe,” said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International’s researcher in Mali. “They are reluctant even to talk about what they’ve experienced and seen.”
But the allegations of those who came forward were chilling — and potentially damning to Mali’s divided and disorganized army.
They were also an ominous reminder of ethnic tensions between the Arab-identified people of the north and “black” Africans from the government-controlled south. And of the fault lines between religious conservatives and more secular northerners who opposed the Islamists’ brutal interpretation of Sharia law.
“One man counted 12 bodies lying beside the well, including two of his family members,” Mootoo said in a phone interview. “He was there when they were throwing the bodies in, but he was so scared he didn’t dare to ask them why they had killed them, or why they were doing that.”
And he added, witnesses were told that the dead had been targeted “because the clothes they were wearing were associated with an Islamist group.”
During interviews last month, witnesses told an Amnesty fact-finding mission that more than 20 civilians were arrested at a bus station in the town of Sevare, more than 600 kilometres north of the capital Bamako.
Then, one said: “I saw a military vehicle stop near a well. Soldiers got out, took bodies and threw them into the well. The vehicle left and came back to the same place. They took other bodies, at least six, and threw them into the well again . . . they fired two or three bursts of machine gun into the well.”
Another witness told Amnesty that a couple from Niger were detained, shot and dropped into the well.
Human Rights Watch also reported accounts of the killings, and its senior West Africa researcher Corinne Dufka told the Associated Press that “given (Mali’s) history and this high level of ethnic tension . . . incidents of reprisals could dramatically increase” as local people who fled the Islamists return to their villages.
Both rights groups called for an immediate investigation of alleged abuses by the Malian authorities, and urged that those responsible be held to account. So far they have had no response.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers had detained the civilians at the bus station after asking for identification and refusing to believe they were from the area, suspecting they might be Islamists. Many of the captives “frantically” tried to get others to vouch for them, before they were driven away to a field and shot.
In another incident, a well-known religious leader from the village of Gnimi-Gnama was seized during prayers, and “five days later his bloated body was discovered a kilometre away.”
Amnesty said it had received calls for help from people in Gao, who claimed to be targeted because of suspected links with Tuareg or Islamist groups, “while government forces were reportedly at times standing by.”
On the eve of French President François Hollande’s visit to Mali, questions were also raised about possible involvement of French forces in an aerial attack on a house and mosque in the central town of Konna, during a joint French-Malian offensive against rebels.
Amnesty said the strike killed a 40-year-old mother, Aminata Maiga, and three of her children, as well as a mechanic riding a bicycle near a mosque. The French defence ministry said it had no part in the attack, but the rights group has called for an investigation.
About 5,000 French soldiers continue to make gains against militants who have been pushed from Mali’s main northern cities into the vast desert area.
Islamist groups took over northern Mali and declared a separate state last April, installing a regime of fear and repression. Now French and Malian forces have taken back much of the populated area. But reports of brutality by Malian soldiers have brought new troubles to the beleaguered residents.
On visits to the towns of Segou, Sevare, Niono, Konna and Diabaly, Amnesty investigators heard evidence that Islamists recruited child soldiers, including a boy “so small that his rifle was sometimes dragging on the ground.”
A 16-year-old told of being injected with drugs and forced to eat rice mixed with “powder” that turned him into a killer.
“I could do anything for my masters,” he told Amnesty. “I perceived our enemies like they were dogs and all that was in my mind was to shoot them.”
He also said that four child soldiers were killed in the battle with Malian and French forces that took over Diabaly last month.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Olivia Ward
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