Amnesty Research Mission to Chad: 29 April - 13 May 2009

Photo: Amnesty International delegation with Marie Larlem, Coordinator of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Liberties in Chad.

We left Chad yesterday, with heavy hearts, a sense of regret that much of our work was curtailed because of insecurity, and a determination to intensify our efforts to bring safety back to eastern Chad.  And as always -- after spending time at the frontlines of human rights struggle -- we have also left with the inspiration of this country’s many courageous and ingenious human rights defenders well lodged in our hearts and minds.

When I was last in eastern Chad with an Amnesty team, in late 2006, safety and security was the overwhelming concern.  In the face of relentless Janjawid attacks from Darfur, people throughout the east were left to fend for themselves.  The Chadian military and police did not care enough to help. Their only preoccupation was fending off the efforts of armed opposition groups to topple the government.  There was no international force on the ground.  There was nothing.  And the cost was immense: thousands killed and injured, untold number of women raped, and hundreds of villages razed to the ground.  
We called on the international community to respond.  And they did.  But more than a year later, with several thousand European and UN soldiers having passed through the region and with hundreds of international and Chadian police tasked with providing protection to refugees, displaced Chadians and humanitarian workers, eastern Chad is still a very dangerous place to be.  It is especially dangerous for women and girls who take major risks every day when they head far outside refugee camps and displacement sites in search of firewood, hay and water.

In 2006 we called on the international community to go to eastern Chad.  Now we will call on the international community to strengthen and improve the mission they have established.  And we will insist that the Chadian government itself play a more central role in protecting human rights in the region, including by finally ensuring that the lawlessness and impunity that plagues this country comes to an end.  There must be a concerted effort to bring to justice the people who are responsible for widespread human rights violations throughout eastern Chad and the rest of the country, including beating and raping women, killing and attacking humanitarian workers, and recruiting child soldiers.

We began that work towards the end of our mission.  We had meetings with senior French and US diplomats in N’Djamena, two countries whose influence here is considerable.  We began laying out recommendations for action: steps the international community needs to take, and steps that the government of Chad must be pressed to take.  We will refine our recommendations over the coming days as we pull together the findings of our research over the past two weeks.  No doubt there will be more work with members of the UN Security Council in New York.  And we will certainly want to make sure that governments hear the powerful worldwide voices of Amnesty International’s members, insisting that insecurity give way to justice in eastern Chad.

As we leave, yes, my heart is heavy. 

But the heaviness is made much lighter by the great work underway here.  I had a chance to reconnect with several remarkable human rights defenders I had met and worked with during our May 2008 mission to N’Djamena.

Blaise, the tenacious journalist whose independent radio station, FM Liberté, had been forced to close last year, is back on the air covering issues that matter, issues of justice, fairness and equality.

Celine, whose irrepressible energy in working with marginalized women was matched only by the power of the motorcycle with which she roared into neighbourhoods across the city, is still at it even though she has had some worrying anonymous death threats.

And Marie, the head of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Liberties in Chad, who we had to meet in exile across the border in Cameroon last year because of threats she had received, is once again at her desk, overseeing a growing nationwide independent human rights organization.

And this trip has introduced us to so many more.

I will of course long recall Houada, the brave journalist taking to the airwaves to discuss violence against women.

And remember Isaak, the Darfuri refugee and schoolteacher who has once been abducted from his classroom by armed opposition groups but goes on because he knows how important it is to “feed the minds” of young refugee children.

And be humbled when I think of our driver, Ibrahim, whose first concern, after being held captive by armed bandits for 6 or 7 hours was to ask about the safety of the Amnesty team.

Alongside these men and women, and the many others working for change in Chad, we will push on.  There is no other option.  

Photo: Detail from a mural by demobilized child soldiers at transition centre in N'Djamena.

One of the concerns that we have been looking into during the course of our mission is recruitment of child soldiers.  It has been common knowledge for several years that child soldiers are widely recruited in eastern Chad – by the Chadian military, by armed Chadian opposition groups and by the armed groups fighting the Sudanese military in Darfur. 

There have been promises made by the Chadian government to keep children out of its military.  Various armed groups have made similar promises.  The UN funds programs for demobilizing and rehabilitating children who have been recruited.  So are children now safe in eastern Chad?

It became clear very quickly that children are far from safe – and that the pressure and the enticement of joining in the fighting are still considerable.

We needed look no further than the faces of so very many of the Chadian soldiers patrolling the streets of Abéché and other parts of eastern Chad during over the past week.  Many certainly looked to be no more than fourteen years old at best.

We have been able to document a number of cases of past recruitment.  In Gaga Refugee Camp we spoke with the teacher of a boy who had been part of the military attack that the Justice and Equality Movement, a Darfuri armed group, tried to mount against the Sudanese capital Khartoum in May 2008.  That attack was repelled quite easily by the Sudanese government.  The boy was detained and badly tortured in Sudan before finally being seen by the Red Cross and then released.  He is back with his family in Gaga Camp, but is deeply troubled.

At Bredjing Camp we interviewed three teachers and one student who were rounded up in a major recruitment drive by the Sudan Liberation Army 3 years ago.  Some 3000 recruits from a number of the Darfur refugee camps were taken over the span of several days.  One of the teachers, who was 25 years old at the time, was teaching his class of 51 boys when SLA fighters burst in and forced everyone out, including some boys as young as 9 years of age.  They all described being beaten, threatened and kept in terrible conditions.  Eventually most were able to escape.  The SLA did not have enough food for all the new recruits, nor enough guards to hold onto them all.

All three of the teachers, themselves young men, are back in Bredjing Camp and have continued to work in the schools, even if that puts them at risk of being rounded up in some future recruitment campaign.  As one of the teachers put it, “we have to feed their minds or they will go off to fight.” 

That is something we heard at every turn in the camps.  Primary education is widely available in all of the Darfur refugee camps and an impressive number of children – boys and girls – are enrolled.  But it ends with grade eight, and there is almost nothing available after that.  At precisely the age when children would be most susceptible to a call to join the army or run away with a rebel group, the one thing that might dissuade them – a chance to continue with their studies – disappears.  Everyone – students and teachers in the camps, organizations running the schools, and UN agencies – was very clear.  The best way to confront the recruitment of child soldiers is to make secondary school education widely available.

Today in N’Djamena we spent time in a transition centre for demobilized child soldiers, operated by CARE and UNICEF.  We spoke with a 16 year old boy, who had joined one of the Chadian armed groups when he was 11 years old and remained a faithful combatant for three years, rising to the rank of captain and commanding around 200 fighters.  He participated in four battles before the leader of his group decided to join the Chadian government in 2007.  Another young man joined one of the Chadian groups when he was 15.  He was not forced but joined because he was tired of the humiliation his ethnic group was experiencing in eastern Chad.  He eventually became part of the rebel push that led to terrible fighting in N’Djamena in February 2008.  He was badly injured in that attack and showed us the entry and exit scars from a bullet wound to his back.  He now dreams of going back to the east to be reunited with his family but does not want to do so until he has been able to find work, earn some money and go back with a sense of pride. 

A Chadian government poster on the wall of the transit centre proclaims “Non à l’enrôlement des enfants” (No recruitment of children).  There is still far to go before those will be more than words on a poster.

Photo: Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights (APLFT) vehicle that was stolen by a group of armed men.

[Note: this mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone.  Listen to Alex's recorded message and read the transcript below]

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Today was supposed to be a straightforward day of travel.  We were set to fly back to Abéché from Farchana and then make some decisions about the next steps in our mission.

But the skies in eastern Chad were hazy, heavy with sand and clouds.  We waited at the UN base here for six hours, hoping that the UN helicopter would arrive from Abéché and then turn around for its return trip, with us on board.  The word from Abéché, hour after hour, however, was that flights weren’t taking off because of visibility problems.  Attendez.  Wait.

By 3 p.m. it had become clear that we weren’t going anywhere.  But then suddenly that did not matter anymore.  The UN base was suddenly frantic with worrying news that a UN vehicle in the area had been stopped by armed men and – the first rumour suggested – three UN police officers abducted.  It had happened outside Bredjing refugee camp, where we had been working on Tuesday and Wednesday, along a road we had travelled frequently.

Very quickly UN vehicles had been dispatched from the base.  Soon there was welcome news that the 3 police officers had not been abducted.  Their vehicle had indeed been stolen, but they and others in the UN convoy they were travelling with, had not been harmed.

But almost immediately we had much more distressing news.  When we called friends at the local office of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights in Chad to see if someone could come to pick us up and bring us back to the World Food Program compound where we have been staying these past several days, we learned that one of their vehicles had also been stopped by armed men this afternoon and two of their staff abducted.

Our hearts sank when we learned that one of the abducted men was Ibrahim, the driver who has been working closely with us for the past week.  He had worked with us in Abéché and had driven to Farchana to continue to work with us.  He had been with us early this morning when we made a short visit to nearby Farchana refugee camp.  He had dropped us at the UN base only about 4 or 5 hours before he had been abducted. Ibrahim was a lovely, quiet man, father of 3 young children.  He was always there with us and for us.  And now he might be missing.

Ibrahim had been intending to meet up with us again in Abéché to continue working with us.  Our first agonizing worry, therefore, was that he had been taken while on the road back to Abéché.   Never before had any of us faced the prospect of the possibility of such a direct link between someone’s collaboration with an Amnesty research mission and suffering some terrible harm.

For hours there was no news of our two friends with APLFT, Ibrahim and Nerambaye.  We did eventually get official word that the flights had been cancelled.  The UN police officers whose vehicle was stolen returned to the base. But no word about Ibrahim and Nerambaye.   Time came for us to return to the WFP base.  We returned to town with very heavy hearts.

Our first stop upon return to town was to the APLFT office, where all APLFT staff in the area had gathered.  The worry and distress in people’s face was heavy.  But just as we arrived, the local director’s cell phone rang – and there, on the other end, was Ibrahim.  He and Nerambaye had been released in a village right along the border with Sudan.  They had not been harmed.  The vehicle was lost.  They were in safe hands and would be returning to Farchana in the morning.  

As you can imagine, relief and joy overflowed.    

We then learned the fuller story about the afternoon’s worrying events.  Ibrahim and Nerambaye had been driving out to the village of Hardjab Hadid, which lies between two large refugee camps, Bredjing and Treguine.  They were going to pick up a group of 8 APLFT staff from offices in the area, who were coming into Farchana for a meeting.  When they did not arrive in time, the group of 8 managed to find room in a UNHCR vehicle that was returning to Farchana as part of a UN-escorted convoy.  That was the convoy – led by a vehicle of unarmed UN police, with a vehicle of armed Chadian police from the newly established Integrated Security Detachment bringing up the rear – that fell victim to the attack.  Such is the state of security in eastern Chad that a group of 3 armed men was able to easily overwhelm the UN  convoy.  Everyone was forced from their vehicles, including the unarmed UN police and the armed Chadian police.  No one was harmed.  Two vehicles were stolen.

It was soon after this had happened that the fate of Ibrahim and Nerambaye became clear. They had not made it to pick up the group of 8 because they had been stopped and abducted before they made it to the village.  A very upsetting day obviously for the hardworking human rights activists with the APLFT – 10 of their staff were caught up in these 2 incidents.  Fortunately, all have come through unharmed, though terribly shaken.

In the wake of these attacks, it is impossible not to think of how inadequate security arrangements are in eastern Chad.  UN forces took over from a European security force in mid-March.  The UN force is supposed to number 5200, but to date is only at about 40% of that level.  Stories abound of the troops being plagued by a lack of equipment and weapons.  For instance, countries have only pledged 6 of 18 helicopters that the force needs to carry out basic security operations in the area.  Similarly, the new UN-trained Chadian police force – set up specifically to deal with the crisis in eastern Chad – is not at its full levels either, 700 of 850 have been deployed, but they lack sufficient vehicles and other material essential to their work.

That must change.  The international community has promised safety to the people of eastern Chad.  We must make sure they deliver on that promise.  Ibrahim was lucky today. Someone else might not have the same luck tomorrow.

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Photo:Darfuri refugee women and girls at Bredjing camp filling water containers.

[Note: this mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone.  Listen to Alex's recorded message and read the transcript below]

Select an audio format to listen: WAV  MP3

 
"They are there on their own." 

Those words have been haunting us all day.   We have now come further east from Abéché to Farchana.  Within perhaps a 30-40 kilometre semi-circle around Farchana there are 3 major refugee camps as well as 12 sites for displaced Chadians.  Farchana itself is not far from Chad’s border with Darfur.

Our intention today had been to travel to one of the sites for displaced Chadians in this region, Arkoum.  We want to make it to several IDP sites during our mission because we have certainly come to understand that their safety and well-being is extremely precarious.

It is a universal story.  Without any doubt refugees, including Darfuri refugees here in Chad, face considerable hardship, insecurity and violence.  The international community does, however, have a much clearer role and responsibility for their protection.  Not so with IDP’s, who remain, of course, citizens of the country, in this case Chad.  Here, as is so often the case around the world, Chadians displaced within their own country have only minimal protection.  Largely abandoned by their own government and not fully protected by the international community.  And of course, still very near to the terrible human rights violations that forced them from their homes in the first place.   

It is so important that we get access to some of the sites, to see and hear first hand the challenges displaced Chadians face.   But while the refugee camps are all within fairly easy reach of the town of Farchana, our base, the sites for IDP’s are more remote and difficult to reach.  And because of growing security concerns in eastern Chad, in the wake of a rebel incursion far to the south of here in Goz Beida, the UN decided today to cancel plans for a convoy to Arkoum, which we would have been part of.  Instead we travelled to a nearby refugee camp, Bredjing, and spent the day working with Darfuri refugees.  

A human rights monitor with the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights in Chad who is usually based in Arkoum had intended to travel back out to the site with us today, but was obviously unable to do so.  His worry was palpable.  It was he who kept saying: “ils sont là; tous seuls” – they are there on their own.  

It all comes down to security.  In the midst of insecurity, the full range of human rights teeters and collapses.  That of course has been the horrible reality in both eastern Chad and Darfur for the past five years.  Insecurity means killings and rape; homes destroyed and crops burned.  But it also means education, health, food and water supplies, and livelihoods are also turned inside out.

And it is still insecurity that reigns in eastern Chad.  When I was here with an Amnesty team in late 2006 the local population, thousands of whom had recently been chased from their homes in a brutal wave of attacks, felt completely abandoned.   The sad truth is that 2 ½ years later, even though international troops and police are now deployed here, displaced Chadians remain at terrible risk.

And whenever security concerns arise here, as they have again, they are the first to be cut off, the first to be abandoned.  In so many respects, the most vulnerable yet the least protected.  As our friend kept saying, they are on their own.  We must find a way to stand with them.

Photo: Gaga Refugee Camp

With every major human rights disaster, lives are ripped apart in so many ways.  Thousands; or tens, even hundreds of thousands of people are killed and badly injured; countless women and girls are raped; and homes and livelihoods are destroyed.  And always there is massive displacement.  People flee in search of safety.  Some escape only a few kilometres away; others cross borders and become refugees.

The crisis in Darfur and Chad has unleashed unimaginable levels of displacement.  Within Darfur itself more than 2 million people have fled their homes but remain trapped inside Darfur.  Around 250,000 Darfuris have been able to cross the border into neighbouring Chad.  Many have now been refugees here for 5 or 6 years.  And the terrible violence within Chad has forced close to 200,000 Chadians to flee their homes.  They live in precarious danger in IDP (internally displaced people) sites scattered throughout the east of the country.

Today we visited Gaga refugee camp, about 90 minutes to the east of Abéché.  Gaga Camp was set up in 2005 and is now home to around 20,000 refugees from Darfur.  We met with many of the camp leaders and with other inhabitants of the camp.

What came through above all else was a sense of despair.  Refugees feel trapped here. When they go outside the camp they face the serious risk of being threatened, beaten or raped.  We gathered many testimonies from refugees who have been attacked when they leave the camp. And very clearly  it is women and girls who suffer that most, as they leave the camp frequently in search of firewood, water and to go to nearby markets.  Outside the camp they are targeted for attack by armed bands in the area.  Among many accounts we heard about a 13-year old girl who was badly beaten just 2 days ago while out with a group of women and girls seeking firewood.

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Houada Mahamat Maloum, Journalist and Alex Neve.

Beyond any doubt, one of the most glaring human rights problems in eastern Chad continues to be staggering levels of violence against women and girls.  When we were here in 2006 there was absolutely no protection for women.  International forces hadn’t been deployed yet and the Chadian government simply did not care enough to protect women and girls from rape and beatings when their villages were attacked, while they were fleeing and after they had become displaced.  There was no place of safety and no one to provide safety.

But that has changed.  There have been international forces on the ground here for about 18 months.  Alongside the soldiers a new police force has been trained and deployed, the Détachement intégré de sécurité, known as the DIS.  The DIS has a specific mandate to provide security in and around refugee camps and displacement sites. Surely all of the increased security has brought increased safety for the refugee women from Darfur and the internally displaced women from Chad?  Sadly, not.

Tomorrow we will travel to Gaga Refugee Camp, not far from Abéché.  From the many meetings we have had with humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, independent journalists and local activists we already know what we are going to hear.  For women and girls in the camp, the reality of violence is still there at every turn: violence in the family, rape even at the hands of camp staff, beatings and attacks when women leave the camp in search of firewood or to go to market. 

We spent time today with Houada Mahamat Maloum, a remarkable young woman, a journalist, who is doing everything she can to draw attention to the plight of women and girls in eastern Chad.  She travels regularly to refugee c amps and displacement sites in the region and hears firsthand from women about the violence they experience on a daily basis.  She shares these stories on the radio in an effort to open peoples’ eyes to the injustices women and girls continue to face.  She continues despite the resistance she often hears, including criticism that she is forgetting her religion when she speaks out about such concerns.

Despite all of the changes that have happened in eastern Chad over the past two years Houada’s assessment was straightforward and bleak.  It is not yet safe to be a woman here.   And she added that it will not be safe for women until the justice system takes rape and other violence against women seriously.  We assured her we will add our voice to that demand.

Our team of three has wrapped up our first day of work in eastern Chad.  The clearest assessment I can give at this point is that the heat is unrelentingly searing.  We flew into Abéché, the main city in the east on a UN flight very early this morning.  The first thing to hit me is how dramatically this isolated small city has been transformed through the deployment of European Union and United Nations forces just over a year ago.  It began with hitching a ride with a Norwegian military engineer who is helping to build a hospital on the new UN base here.  We needed his help simply getting to the base’s entrance where a local human rights group had arranged for us to be picked up.  None of that was even contemplated when I was here 2 ½ years ago.  The base didn’t’ even exist.

The need for an international force on the ground in eastern Chad was the most pressing recommendation that came out of our earlier mission to eastern Chad in late 2006.  At that time, an unceasing wave of violence had ravaged the region, mainly in the form of vicious attacks mounted by Darfur’s terrifying Janjawid militia groups spilling across the border from neighbouring Sudan.  The Chadian government, based some 1000 kilometres away in the capital, seemed unable, unprepared and, sadly, unwilling to take action to protect people in the east from these widespread human rights violations. 

We gathered wrenching stories at that time. Thousands of people had been killed, countless women raped, hundreds of villages and settlements destroyed, and close to 200,000 Chadians fled their homes and became internally displaced within their own country.  In interview after interview we heard people describe their feeling of abandonment: abandoned before, during and after the attacks.  Abandoned to terror and to death.  It was clear that the international community had to step in and provide protection.   We pushed hard for that to happen and certainly welcomed the UN Security Council’s decision in September 2007 to assemble a force. 

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Watch this three minute video in which Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, provides background information and context for the upcoming Amnesty International research mission to eastern Chad that he will be joining in early May, 2009.

Watch the Chad Mission Video

Amnesty is initiating this research mission to investigate reports of widespread human rights violations facing the people of Chad. With all foreign aid organizations forced out of Sudan, this is a time of extreme vulnerability for the people who have fled across the Sudan-Chad border from Darfur. 

Watch this blog for Alex's reports from the field, including audio messages and photos when communications from the region allow.

You can receive an automatic update when Alex posts a report from the field by subscribing to this blog by email or by adding the RSS feed to your reader.

A man showing the blood-soaked clothing of his brother who was killed in a helicopter attack on 3 February 2008

The fighting between government and armed opposition forces in N’Djamena on February 2 and 3 was intense.  And as is so often the case when armed conflicts rage in cities or towns, the fighting was particularly dangerous and deadly for civilians.  Throughout our time in Chad we tried to get a sense of the scale and nature of human rights violations against N’Djamena’s civilian population.

One of the hardest hit neighbourhoods was Blabine, which is close to both a large mosque and central market area.  We were able to tour the area and speak widely with many local residents, who painted a picture of the absolute terror they faced for most of those two days.  Government forces relied heavily on helicopters in trying to defeat and push back the armed opposition groups.  In Blabine, two helicopters, spent much of their time circling and raining shells down on those below.  It quickly became painfully clear though that they most certainly did not take adequate precautions to ensure that civilians in the area would be protected.  Quite the contrary in fact.  In Blabine it seems that the deaths, injuries and destruction were overwhelming civilians.

The helicopters flew so low on many occasions that residents, who cowered in fear in the concessions which fill the narrow streets of this neighbourhood, could see the pilots’ faces.  Those who did consistently reported to us that the pilots were “les blancs” (whites) – which is in keeping with reports that the Chadian military has turned to mercenaries to fly the helicopters.  As one woman told us: “if we could see them, they could certainly see us.  So why did this happen?”

This photo captures the extent of the destruction in one family's concession

We asked people to describe just how low the helicopters flew.  Many used the minaret of the nearby central mosque to help in their description, indicating that the helicopters flew just over its tip.  One man asked the question, “ how could so much death come from a helicopter that passed so close to the mosque?”  Many were killed in this area.  We were given details of numerous deaths ranging from an 8 year old girl to a 61 year old grandmother.  We met many who had been badly injured, including a young girl whose left leg has had to be amputated beneath the knee.  And we saw homes that had been totally destroyed.

There has been nothing done to reach out to people in this neighbourhood.  No explanations from the government.  No effort to help people recover and rebuild.

Our last official meeting before leaving Chad was with the country’s new Prime Minister, Youssouf Saleh Abbas.  In a wide-ranging hour long discussion one of the serious concerns we raised was the plight of people in neighbourhoods like Blabine.  The Prime Minister pointed to an ongoing Commission of Inquiry that has been mandated to examine complaints of human rights violations and breaches of humanitarian law associated with the attack on N’Djamena.  We stressed that we welcome the Commission of Inquiry and will certainly press to ensure that it is able to carry out its work in an independent and effective manner.  We noted that it faces many challenges, including whether the government will fully cooperate in all aspects of its investigations. 

We highlighted however, that people in neighbourhoods such as Blabine need assistance now – not months from now after the government has reviewed the Commission’s report.  He seemed receptive.  We will need to follow-up. 

One of the many issues we have focused on during our time in Chad is the question of press freedom, or more to the point a very worrying recent crackdown against independent journalists. 

There has been a thriving independent media in Chad for a number of years.  A number of different newspapers and various radio stations have valiantly projected a critical voice that covers human rights issues, asks probing questions about corruption and good governance and seeks to advance a broad understanding of justice in N’Djamena and beyond.

However, much like human rights defenders, journalists have paid a heavy price in these recent difficult months.  Many have been imprisoned, threatened or attacked.  Several have fled to neighbouring countries.

And the situation has been grim for those who remain in Chad.  The government took advantage of the state of emergency that it declared from mid-February to mid-March to issue a very repressive decree that essentially implements a proposed new media law that had been rejected two times last year by the country’s Parliament.

As well, one of the country’s most important independent radio stations, FM Liberté, was forcibly shut down by the government four months ago.  We raised concerns about the station’s closure in every government meeting we could.  We were assured that everyone seems to agree that it should be reopened; but no one seems willing to take the responsibility for making it happen.

We spent a good deal of time with a very dedicated FM Liberté journalist, Blaise Djimadoum Ngargoum.  Blaise is equal parts a determined human rights activist and a fiercely independent journalist.  In fact he sees no separation between the two. As he kept reminding us, in Chad, there is no better way to broadly convey a human rights message to the people than to take to the airwaves.  We will work hard in the days and weeks to come to ensure that FM Liberté resumes its important place in the effort to safeguard human rights in Chad.