Women of Ivory Coast Mark Women’s Day by Commemorating 7 Women Killed By Gbagbo’s Regime
Women Killed in Abobo (beijingtoday.com.cn)
The women in Ivory Coast celebrated the International Women’s Day in a very special way by marching in the streets of the capital to the spot where last week seven unarmed women were shot by the soldiers loyal to incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo.
This horrifying crime drew a lot of criticism from the international community.
Some of the organizers of the protest stayed at home for fear of reprisals from the security forces, while others took it to the streets to protest the regime of Laurent Gbagbo.
The soldiers opened fire against demonstrators again in Treichville, near Abidjan, killing at least four, three men and a woman.
About 200,000 women protested last Thursday against Gbagbo, blocking the Abobo neighborhood, a suburb dominated by the people loyal to the president-elect Alassane Ouattara.
Gbagbo and Ouattara (biyokulule.com)
The security forces entered the area and began bombing with mortars, causing seven to die, which brings the death toll to 400, most of them people loyal to Ouattara.
A corridor has been created in the western part of the country to the neighboring Liberia, where thousands of people have already fled to fearing that a all-out war would break in their land.
The scandal has been dragging on since November 2010, and seems to have developed into what was called yesterday by the Oxfam a “forgotten emergency.”
Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara have confronted in the runoffs and both claimed victory, Ouattara being declared the winner by the international community, while Gbagbo was declared the winner by the electoral bureau (Ouattara charged that the bureau in question has annulled votes for him until the balance was tipped in his favor).
Gbagbo took advantage of the international situation, especially by the focusing of the entire world on what was going on in North Africa and Arabic Peninsula, and refused any propositions to leave office and go into exile.
Protest in Ivory Coast (beijingtoday.com.cn)
He also played a winning card (so far) by succeeding in convincing by different means important countries in West Africa to side with him.
Thus, South African leadership said that the runoffs in Ivory Coast were so rigged on both sides that it is too much to say that Ouattara won.
Ghana also sided with Gbagbo in Ecowas, by making sure that no swift intervention against him would happen, which gave him sufficient self-confidence to organize his own defense in spite of the economic sanctions his country was submitted to as a result of his actions.
