Voters queue at the polling station at the Koudoukou school in the flashpoint PK5 district in Bangui yesterday.

AFP/Bangui


Peacekeepers massed in a flashpoint district of the Central African Republic capital Bangui yesterday to enable people to vote safely a day after violence prevented them from casting ballots in a key referendum.
Five people were killed in clashes Sunday in the Muslim-majority PK-5 district, heightening fears over whether long-delated elections can go ahead on December 27.
Another 20 people were wounded, several seriously, in fighting involving rocket launchers and machine guns, the Red Cross said yesterday.
UN peacekeepers and French soldiers massed yesterday in the PK-5 district, and a military helicopter circled overhead, to allow its voters to complete polling in a constitutional  referendum aimed at ending Christian-Muslim sectarian strife.
Turnout was strong and no new violence was reported by midday in the district, normally Bangui’s bustling trading hub.
The Muslim community in PK-5 is split between a majority who favour the electoral process and those opposed, now labelled the “enemies of peace”.
“We agree to live together with the Christians. We want to live in peace but we have been taken hostage” by armed groups, said Hassan Brassoul Moussa, a spokesman for Muslim youth in PK-5.
He demanded the arrest of “criminals who want to sow chaos amongst us” and Abdoulaye Hissene, a former Seleka “general” accused of orchestrating Sunday’s violence, came in for special vitriol.
“This has to stop,” said a young vendor, Mustapha Younous, as people cheered around him. “If Abdoulaye Hissene (and associates) want to do politics they can do it somewhere else. We are businessmen and we want to do business!”
A pensioner wearing a baseball cap with the word “Paix” (peace) emblazoned on it said: “Let them be beheaded if need be. While we have to pay for the broken goods, they go around freely in their cars with tinted glass. We have had enough, enough!”
Makeup balloting was also held elsewhere in the troubled former French colony where armed men interfered with Sunday’s polling, electoral authorities said.
An unnamed source in the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA, sent in to quell fighting that has forced 10% of the population to flee their homes, reported scattered violence in the north and east of the landlocked country.
Some supporters of the mainly Christian militia known as the “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) also opposed the vote, namely backers of ousted president Francois Bozize, whose candidacy for the upcoming presidential election has been rejected by the constitutional court.
Late Sunday, UN special envoy Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, praised the voters for their “courage”, saying they overcame “all fears and threats” to cast their ballots.
“The Central Africans took a historic step in their march towards greater democracy,” he told reporters.
The UN Security Council was to discuss the situation following the referendum yesterday.
The vote is seen as a test run for presidential and parliamentary elections set for December 27 to end more than two years of conflict between the Muslim and Christian militias.
The proposed constitution would limit presidential tenure to two terms, fight institutional corruption and rein in the armed militias, blamed for years of chaos and terror.
If adopted, it would usher in the sixth republic since independence from France in 1960 and mark the 13th political regime in a country notorious for its chronic instability.
Results are expected in the next two days.
Unrest has forced the impoverished country to postpone elections repeatedly despite intense international pressure to hold them.
The Central African Republic plunged into its worst crisis since independence after Bozize was ousted by rebels from the Seleka force in March 2013, triggering a wave of tit-for-tat violence with “anti-balaka” militias.
The UN peacekeeping chief called yesterday for quick action against “spoilers” in the Central African Republic after violence marred a constitutional referendum.
“Efforts to undermine yesterday’s constitutional referendum demonstrate that there are actors that remain determined to derail the political process in the Central African Republic,” said Herve Ladsous, the UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping.
The referendum was widely seen as a dress rehearsal for nationwide elections on December 27 to pick a new president and parliament tasked with steering the country out of crisis.
“With only two weeks until the first round of elections, time is of the essence to further contain such attempts by the spoilers,” Ladsous told the UN Security Council.
He said there must be an “uncompromising message” warning of consequences for those who attempt to derail the elections or try to undermine the political transition.
Ladsous told the council that despite the violence, “we must not allow attempts by a few, as demonstrated yesterday, to disrupt the hopes and aspirations of many for a successful electoral process that will return their country to constitutional order.”


Burundi starts trial of May coup plotters, days after fighting

Reuters
Nairobi


More than two dozen generals and senior army officers accused of being behind a failed coup went on trial in Burundi yesterday amid heightened tensions in the capital after attacks last week by insurgents in which about 90 people were killed.
Former defence minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye and five other generals are among the 28 people standing trial for their role in the attempted coup in May, launched when president Pierre Nkurunziza was abroad. The coup was swiftly foiled.
Onésime Kabayabaya, one of the defence lawyers, told Reuters the trial had begun in the central town of Gitega. He said the defendants had complained about mistreatment in jail and said they had not had time to review their case files.
Justice ministry spokeswoman Agnès Bangiricenge said the group was “charged with an attempt to unseat the country’s constitutional institutions”, as well as carrying out assassinations and other acts of violence.
The trial highlights what experts say are worrying signs of division among the security forces in a crisis that erupted in April when Nkurunziza announced his bid for a third term.
Opponents said his re-election, secured in a disputed vote in July, violated a peace deal that ended a civil war in 2005.
That peace deal, which opponents said limited the president to two five-year terms, also included reforms to the army, which absorbed rebel fighters of the majority Hutu ethnic group into a force that had been led by the Tutsi minority.
Burundi’s government insists the army remains united, but experts fear the violence could fracture the patchwork force.
The crisis has stoked tensions in a region where memories of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide are still raw. Burundi accused Rwanda, which has the same ethnic mix, of letting rebels recruit Burundian refugees on its soil, a charge Kigali denied.
The trial follows fighting in the capital Bujumbura last Friday when insurgents attacked military sites. The government said the gunmen had aimed to seize weapons but had failed.
“Both Hutu and Tutsi in the army were united to kick off the attackers,” presidential media adviser Willy Nyamitwe told Reuters, dismissing reports that soldiers in the camps had fought each.
He said the attackers “came from outside the barracks”.
Following a typical pattern during the months of crisis, life in Bujumbura swiftly returned to a semblance of normality after Friday’s flare-up, with people back on the streets and shops reopening.
The violence was just the latest in a spate of shootings, explosions and assassinations.
Several leaders in the May coup bid fled. One of them said the plotters still planned to overthrow the president. Burundi has accused Rwanda of providing safe haven for the rebels.
Burundi’s Nyamitwe said Kigali was allowing Burundian refugees to be recruited “into a rebel group, trained and armed by Rwanda”, making his comments after a charity said in a report that “non-state armed groups” were recruiting.
Rwanda, which hosts more than 73,000 Burundian refugees, denied the allegations.
More than 220,000 Burundians have fled their country, heading to neighbouring states, as the violence persists.
A draft resolution introduced at the UN rights council yesterday called for an investigative team to be deployed to Burundi “as soon as possible” to probe abuses in the crisis-hit country.
The resolution will be debated at an extraordinary meeting of the council on Thursday which was requested by the United States to review deteriorating unrest in Burundi, where mounting violence has sparked fears of a civil war.
The draft calls for United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein to  “deploy urgently and as soon as possible a mission...to undertake a diligent and thorough investigation on violations and abuses of human rights” in Burundi.
The draft further requests that Zeid’s office “be provided with all necessary resources to fulfil this mandate”, which includes permission from Burundi’s government for outside experts to work in the country.  
Burundi on Friday saw some of its worst violence in months of political unrest, with 87 people killed.
Burundi’s crisis has included a failed May coup, sparked by president Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term in office, which he later won in disputed elections in July.
UN figures released before Friday’s violence showed at least 240 people had been killed and more than 200,000 had fled abroad since May, raising fears of a return to civil war, a decade after the end of a 1993-2006 conflict between rebels from the Hutu majority and an army dominated by minority Tutsis.
In Kigali, a report yesterday from a US-based advocacy group said Burundian refugees in Rwanda were being recruited into rebel groups.
Refugees International said that men and boys in Rwanda’s Mahama camp, run by the United Nations and Rwandan authorities, were being recruited into “non-state armed groups” and faced threats if they refused.
It added that the Burundian recruits are trained in Rwanda and efforts are made to send them back to Burundi via neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

A woman mourns after her son was killed during gunfire in the Nyakabiga neighbourhood of Bujumbura on Saturday.