https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5dmn/russian-mercenaries-are-raping-and-murdering-civilians-theyve-been-hired-to-protect
May 19, 2021
VICE World News uncovers evidence of Kremlin-backed
gunmen gang-raping civilians in the Central African Republic and hiring hit
squads to take out torture victims so their crimes are not exposed.
BANGUI, Central African Republic – “There was a camp
of Russian soldiers and others, they started to question me. ‘You are a
girlfriend of the rebels, you came to spy on our positions and report to your
lovers,’ they said. I said no, but they insisted.”
Zara, whose name has been changed for her protection,
was walking along the main road into the Central African Republic’s capital Bangui,
when she was arrested by this joint unit of Russian and Central African troops.
It was days after a rebel movement known as the CPC
came close to overthrowing the government in January. Intent on taking over the
government, the rebels still surrounded Bangui. The national military and a
paramilitary group known colloquially as les requins or “the sharks” were on
high alert for suspected rebels and rebel sympathisers.
Zara was on her way to reassure her family that
despite the situation, she was safe. But then the Russian soldiers arrested
her.
“Some soldiers were behind trees, I was surprised,”
she told VICE World News. “They came out and took me into a dilapidated house.
They bound me and said I’ll be killed if I don’t tell them the truth.”
Zara remembers that four foreign men handcuffed her
foot to the chair and came back hours later.
“One said, ‘We’re back, tell us the truth now.’ And he
opened his pants, while talking to the others in a language I don’t know.”
“He wanted to force me,” she continued, looking down
and speaking quietly.
“I refused and cried. He opened his zipper [and]
pushed my head violently on it. With guns and all that. I got scared. I did it
for both of them.”
Zara says she remained in the house for several more
hours after the two men forced her to have oral sex and later, they walked with
her back to her family home.
“I thought they were going to shoot me down on the
way,” she said.
The Russian soldiers are part of a deployment of
several hundred private military contractors hired by the Central African
government to wrest the country back from rebel control.
Abidah, a shop-owner in Bangui whose name has also
been changed, tells a similar story of being caught up in the sweep against
suspected rebels in January and gang raped.
After losing her ID card when she fled a rebel attack,
she was arrested by a joint unit of the “sharks” and Russian soldiers.
She said that the mixed unit took her to a hillside
outside of Bangui and berated her with accusations of sleeping with the rebel
leader.
Then, “the white men” took her SIM card from her phone
and checked “with a computer, to see if I contacted the rebels...Most of my
calls come from my family.”
Despite no evidence that Abidah was connected to the
rebels, the abuse continued.
“There were three white men among the rapists. When
they finished, the others, sharks, dragged me away and raped me again for six
hours.”
That evening, “they threw me behind the stadium [in
Bangui]” and Abidah made her way home. “I couldn’t walk.”
Abidah told VICE World News that she saw “piles” of
bodies on the hillside.
“They killed many people behind the hill,” she said.
“I’m not at peace. My mind isn’t working well.”
The Russian soldiers in the CAR are military
contractors, members of the shadowy, Kremlin-backed Wagner Group, deployed to
train the Force armee centrafricaine (FACA), the national
military.
Since a rebel movement overthrew the government in
2013, the FACA has been unable to extinguish the rebel groups that grew out of
the brutal sectarian conflict that followed.
Today, rebels still control nearly three-quarters of
the country, as the conflict has morphed from a sectarian war between Muslims
and Christians into an opportunistic scramble for resource-rich areas and
control of the government.
Despite the presence of French and other European
troops, and an approximately 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission known as
MINUSCA, efforts to train and reinforce the national military have amounted to
little in terms of taking back territory and protecting civilians.
Dimitri Chop, a Russian soldier working as a public
information office for MINUSCA, put it plainly.
“We were the first ones to organise shooting weapons
with real weapons. Before us they were trained with sticks. I’m not joking,” he
said, referring to EU and French training exercises.
“Russian instructors were the first ones to organise
training with real weapons.”
Russia signed a deal to provide military support and
training to the Central African Republic in 2017.
After Russian lobbying, Moscow was granted a relaxation of a UN Security
Council arms embargo on the CAR, in order to provide light weapons in 2017 and again to provide military mounted
vehicles in 2020. The exception has been a source of controversy and tension
between France and Russia.
On the ground, Chop said, “This is a really fruitful
step. These armed groups are equipped much better than the army. They have
rockets, good ammunition.”
Outside of the weapons sales, the details of the deal
between Russia and the CAR are opaque and the active role of Wagner “trainers”
on the frontlines has not been officially acknowledged by either government.
A VICE World News team observed Russian so-called
trainers manning mounted weapons throughout the capital and in the city of
Bouar, and was told several times by Russian sources in-country that the troops
were on the way to and returning from the frontline fight with the rebels.
Beyond potential violations about the use of private
military contractors in active conflict, VICE World News spoke to victims and
rights activists in Bangui and uncovered a disturbing pattern of claims that
Russian contractors are involved in torture, extrajudicial killings, rape and
sexual abuse.
The UN Working Group on the use of Mercenaries wrote
to the CAR government and Russia in April, highlighting allegations of “grave
human rights abuses” and involvement on the ground that goes far beyond
military training and potentially violates international laws of war.
“There is a level of transparency: The Russian
contractors have been brought in to provide training. But we’re seeing
something far beyond that,” Dr Sorcha Macleod, an academic and a member of the
Working Group, told VICE World News.
“When they become directly involved in the
hostilities, that’s the allegation that we have here. It’s not clear who
they’re accountable to.”
As well as having to contend with Russian mercenaries
and Central African paramilitaries, Central Africans like Zara and Abidah, are
also falling victim to abuses at the hands of CPC rebels attempting to take
strategic cities and highways.
“So for civilians, it's really difficult. If they're
on the receiving end of violence and humanitarian law violations, they don't
know who to turn to because they don't know who actually committed these abuses
against them,” Macleod said.
This was the case for Abdullahi, who was tortured and
later killed in his hometown of Bambari, where there is a Russian base.
Abdullahi was a street vendor, arrested on the
roadside and taken to a Russian base.
His brother Bashir, told VICE World News that after
Abdullahi reported torture at the hands of the Russians to local government
officials, he was killed by local assassins, in an alleged hit ordered by
Russian leaders in Bangui.
At the base, “they tortured him,” Bashir said, “they
cut off his middle finger during the torture.”
When he was released three days later, he was
transferred to a hospital in Bangui and his case became widely known. In search
of justice, he reported the torture to a local political leader.
When he returned to Bambari, “he restarted his life,”
Bashir said. “One day...he is coming back home from prayer, some [rebel]
elements followed him, shot him down and ran away.”
His death was blamed on the rebels but his father went
to local rebel leaders for an explanation.
“The Russians paid for him to be killed to silence
him,” Bashir insisted. Both Bashir and Abdullahi’s names have been changed for
their own protection.
Diplomatic sources in Bangui told VICE World News that
the claims of Bashir’s family are credible.
Assassinations are in line with the allegations in the
UN letter and with a still unsolved case of the murder of three Russians
journalists who were killed in an ambush in the CAR in 2018, while investigating the role of Wagner in the conflict.
VICE World News received no response from repeated
requests for comment from Russian diplomats in the CAR, however on Facebook, the Russian
embassy dismissed abuse allegations with “indignation,” calling them “baseless
accusations against those who are trying to restore peace and order.”
And Central African defence minister Marie Noelle
Koyara, one of the chief architects of the deal with the Russians, said the
government had yet to receive any direct reports of abuses at the hands of
Russians or FACA soldiers.
“This saddens me…NGOs make a report, say[ing] that
human rights are not respected,” she said. “If you don’t turn to the concerned
government, how can we investigate?”
When presented with specific examples of alleged
abuses by VICE World News, Koyara said, “There's too much manipulation, and the
politicians too, they write things that influence the population, and that's
not good,” before abruptly ending the interview.
As the authorities continue to blame atrocities on
rebel groups alone and dismiss emerging abuse allegations about the Russian
contractors in the media and by the UN Working Group, Abidah, the shop-owner in
Bangui, remains terrified she will encounter Russian soldiers in the capital.
“I’m not at peace. I don’t sleep at night. I’m scared and
hardly go out,” she said.
“I ask the government: ‘Why me?’ I can’t believe what
happened. I don’t understand.”
