One of these days, his captors might find some unexpected
guests “dropping in on them” (literally).
Une source sécuritaire camerounaise
a indiqué à l'AFP qu'un prisonnier de Boko Haram détenu au Cameroun avait été
relâché en contrepartie de la libération du prêtre. Ce qu'a reconnu à demi-mot
Laurent Fabius, le chef de la diplomatie, en évoquant «des discussions» sur
«des aspects judiciaires» dans lesquelles «le président Biya a été extrêmement
utile et efficace». Reste à savoir ce qu'a arraché de Paris l'inamovible chef
de l'État camerounais.
[Update 3 January 2014] The tragi-comedy in Centrafrique yet yields some well-penned
chronicles:
Centrafrique : l'armée française peine à sécuriser Bangui
En visite dans la capitale de
Centrafrique, Jean-Yves Le Drian a nié un éventuel enlisement de notre armée.
«Sangaris» devait être rapide et discrète. L'armée avait choisi de lui
donner le nom d'un papillon. Il eût mieux valu celui d'une bête plus
dissuasive.
La veille, à la tombée du jour, une
fusillade et une bagarre à coups de pierres et de machettes, partie comme
souvent à Bangui on ne sait trop pourquoi, avaient fait un mort et une
quinzaine de blessés. Le même matin, des coups de feu avaient, là encore, tué
un homme et semé la panique dans le gigantesque camp de réfugiés de l'aéroport.
L'arrivée des troupes françaises a mis un peu de sérénité, tout en suscitant la
colère des riverains. «Désormais nous faisons toutes les missions: de l'interposition,
du convoyage, de la sécurisation», résume un officier.
Cet engagement à haut risque a été
lancé le 26 décembre, après deux jours de violences qui avaient conduit la
capitale au bord de l'anarchie. Après être entrées dans les Ve et VIe arrondissements
de la ville, hauts lieux des affrontements ces derniers temps, les troupes
françaises pénétraient vendredi dans le IIIe, étendant, non sans mal, leur
emprise.
Officiellement, «Sangaris» est en
route et n'a pas changé d'objectifs. «Nous allons encaserner et désarmer les
combattants de manière impartiale.» Dans les faits, l'opération de dissuasion a
rendu caduc, pour l'instant, ce désarmement et ce casernement. Les Séléka,
comme la rébellion des Anti-Balaka, circulent dans leurs zones entrelacées les
unes dans les autres, faisant de la carte de Bangui une véritable peau de
panthère.
[Update 12 January 2014] It gets worse.
Forcing out the recent président centrafricain was supposed to ameliorate
things, but no:
Reports of cannibalism and other
horrific acts of violence surfaced in the Central African Republic on Saturday
night as Christian militias went on the rampage following the resignation of
the country’s Muslim president.
Western-backed peacekeepers,
including French and African Union troops, were attempting to restore order
after Christian mobs destroyed mosques and attacked Muslim neighbourhoods in
the capital, Bangui.
The mobs sensed the upper hand
after regional mediators brought about the resignation on Friday of President
Michel Djotodia, who last night was bound for exile in the West African state
of Benin. “It’s impossible to live with the Muslims,” one looter said. “We
don’t want Arabs in Central Africa.”
Sectarian violence has already
claimed more than 1,000 lives in the CAR in past month, and yesterday,
eyewitnesses spoke of how a machete-wielding gang ate parts of the body of a
Muslim man after attacking him on Tuesday.
(At this point, the soldats
must be wondering : Remind me
again-- what is our mission here exactly?)
But then follows an intriguing detail about diplomatic
history and the cuisine du terroir:
The reports have echoes of the
grisly stories about the country’s late dictator, Jean Bedel Bokassa, who was
alleged to have practised cannibalism during his rule between 1966 and 1979.
Charges of cannabalism against him
were later dropped, despite widespread rumours that he had kept human limbs in
fridges and even served parts of them to visiting French dignitaries.
This comes as a shock to most of us. Such fare was never reviewed or
reported in the guides Michelin !
Media note:
This morning’s New York Times article on the post-Djotodia
scene in Bangui, while admitting certain disorders, makes no reference to any
allegations of cannibalism; pas devant les enfants. But it is all over the francophone
press -- and not simply buried in
the thirty-seventh paragraph, but right in the headlines:
"L'un des individus ayant pris
possession d'un bras est allé acheter du pain et s'est mis à mordre dans la
chair, l'accompagnant de son pain. La scène a fait vomir plusieurs personnes.”
 |
|
Hier soir à Bangui
|
It turns out, actually, that such gourmandise is not unknown
even in present-day France:
In both these stories, the objective correlative -- the
Dickensian detail that brings it home -- is the side-dish: plain bread in CAR; haricots
verts in France.
This is well off the subject, but the man’s profile is
baffling:
Cet ancien marsouin du régiment
d’infanterie de chars de marine (RICM) de Poitiers … il a laissé le souvenir
d’un soldat sans problème mais qui avait refusé une prolongation de contrat et
une offre de reconversion. Après
sa décision de ne pas rempiler, il avait erré plusieurs jours, sans manger.
Oh... okay ... so you're saying ... He was just hungry?
Anyhow.
For obvious reasons, the U.S. press would rather not go there, and
skirts the word when obliged to report from Bangui. The AP story that the Washington Post just put up, speaks
only of “isolated incidents of ‘score-settling’” (!), which makes it sound like
no more than a bad Saturday night in Chicago; no mention of the “C”-word:
In the anglophone media, the uncensored account is available
in Canada, England, Australia, and Japan. So far, the German-language press has shied away. Indeed, today’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung
headlines a heart-warming
Verbrüderungsszenen in Bangui
mhf.
Nairobi In der Hauptstadt der Republik Zentralafrika, Bangui, ist es am
Sonntag zu Verbrüderungsszenen zwischen Kämpfern der muslimischen Seleka-Miliz
und ihren Feinden von den antimuslimischen Kampfgruppen Anti-Balaka gekommen.
Der Versöhnungsakt ist das erste Vorkommnis der Art, seitdem sich die
bürgerkriegsähnlichen Ausschreitungen in mehreren Präfekturen Anfang Dezember
auf Bangui ausgedehnt haben. Laut der Agentur AFP hatten Vermittler der
französischen Interventionstruppen das Treffen vereinbart. In einem Quartier
der Hauptstadt hätten sich die ehemaligen Feinde unter dem Applaus von
Anwohnern umarmt und anschliessend gemeinsam Strassensperren abgeräumt, hiess
es.
 |
|
Les musulmans et les chrétiens
annoncent leur amitié indéfectible
|
So, not a particularly important story, in itself -- it
could always be dismissed as “isolated incidents of anthropophagy”.
But it is interesting to see in
which countries the press is most skittish, when it comes to such things.
~
Curiosity nonetheless piqued, I poked a bit further into the
anthropophagous allegations that the Telegraph reprinted and then dismissed as
rumor.
First, “the charges were dropped” and (from the initial
section of the Wikipedia article) “In 1987, he was cleared of charges of
cannibalism” is not quite the same
thing as “it was established that he hadn’t done it”. Secondly, the “visiting dignitaries” rumors did not involve
merely assistant junior ministers of agriculture or what have you, in whom such
a repast might be excused as youthful high spirits; but Giscard himself:
Former president Dacko was called
to the witness stand to testify that he had seen photographs of butchered bodies
hanging in the dark cold-storage rooms of Bokassa's palace immediately after
the 1979 coup. When the defence put up a reasonable doubt during the
cross-examination of Dacko that he could not be positively sure if the
photographs he had seen were of dead bodies to be used for consumption,
Bokassa's former security chief of the palace was called to testify that he had
cooked human flesh stored in the walk-in freezers and served it to Bokassa on
an occasional basis. The prosecution did not examine the rumours that Bokassa
had served the flesh of his victims to French President Giscard d'Estaing and
other visiting dignitaries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-B%C3%A9del_Bokassa
Also, being “cleared of charges” is not quite the same as “was
never convicted”: here the German
Wiki is somewhat more frank:
Am 26. Dezember 1980 wurde Bokassa
in Abwesenheit wegen Mordes, Folter, Korruption und Kannibalismus zum Tode
verurteilt.http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-B%C3%A9del_Bokassa
The account in French Wikipedia is fascinatingly different:
S'il n'est pas impossible que
Bokassa ait pu pratiquer la manducation sous cette forme traditionnelle, il est
difficile d'accepter sans preuves, à ce stade inexistantes, l'accusation de
cannibalisme à son encontre, d'autant plus qu'il semblerait que cette histoire
ait été inventée par les services secrets français pour ajouter du crédit à
l'image de monstre qu'on voulait donner de Bokassa à l'époque pour justifier
son renversement
The exquisite cultural sensitivity of that exculpatory “manducation
sous cette forme traditionnelle”,
is priceless.
[Update] Your
aid dollars at work:
January 31, 2014
MALAKAL, South Sudan — The looters
came by the thousands. They were organized, systematic and took their time.
At two World Food Program
warehouses in this dusty South Sudanese town, they opened thousands of USAID
cans of vegetable oil and poured the contents into stolen jerry cans. They
ripped open packets of high-nutrition food and took the contents. They stole
computers, light fittings, fans and roof tiles, and even cut away the canvas
from storage tents.
The food they took — 1,700 tons in
all — would have fed more than 100,000 families for a month.
[Update, 7 April 2014]
Once again the freedom-loving people of Thirdworldistan strike back against Western
imperialism:
 |
Le père van der Lugt,
ce traître prètre qui ourdit des complots
contre le peuple
syrien paisible et innocent
|
APRIL 7, 2014
Father Frans van der Lugt, a Dutch
Jesuit priest who became a symbol of suffering and compassion in the
war-ravaged Old City district of Homs, was shot to death.
After Syrian government forces
isolated and laid siege to the rebel-held Old City for more than a year, a
truce in January allowed the evacuation of 1,500 people, both civilians and
fighters. But Father Frans, as he was known, insisted on remaining in the monastery
where he had lived for decades, offering refuge to Muslim and Christian
families alike and sharing their deprivation and trauma.
Jesuits have continued to aid
people in Syria regardless of their politics, an act that the Jesuit workers
describe as humanitarian neutrality, but that some government supporters view
with suspicion. Another foreign-born Jesuit who made his home in Syria, Father
Paolo Dall’Oglio, fell out with the government early in the conflict; he was
kidnapped almost a year ago, it is believed, by extremist fighters.
[Update, 18 May 2014] The latest in the annals of African military valor:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/05/18/nigerian_soldiers_sent_to_fight_boko_haram_revolt_against_commanders.html
[Update 28 September 2014] The latest cautionary tale, re
relying on African military forces to sort things out:
Congolese army soldiers sent to
protect them would commit mass rapes nearby.
[Update 21 Nov 2015]
Maryland woman killed in Mali
worked to improve global health
[Update 28 Feb 2016]
“Peacekeeper babies”
.
