they tell him so and so installed them. That person had no claim to the land, but now drives around on a nice motorbike.88 A village chief on the Bloléquin-Tinhou axis likewise told Human Rights Watch: For the most part, it’s not occupation by force. It’s illegal sale. [Other Guérés] sold our forests while people were displaced. The non-natives didn’t just occupy the forest on their own…. You come back [from being displaced], go into your forest, and find a non-native there, and he says X sold him the land—though that person had no right to that land!89 Leaders from non-native communities describe a similar problem. A Burkinabé leader in Guiglo said that “the natives who remained in the area or who returned quickly from being displaced profited greatly from their compatriots’ absence to sell land to non-native Ivorians and immigrants. The real owner returns to see his plantation has been taken over…. We’ve been inundated with these problems.”90 A non-native community leader on the Duékoué sub-prefecture’s land committee (see Section III) likewise said that most crisis-related cases they receive “are from Guérés who return to see that their plantation has been sold. We don’t really see cases where a non-native just went and occupied a forest. It’s almost always based on a sale, an illegal sale, from another Guéré.”91 Most cases documented by Human Rights Watch involved fraudulent sellers with no family relation to the true owner, often from a neighboring village. Many dispossessed Guéré landowners voiced anger primarily at the illegal seller, though the transaction also pits them against the buyer, generally an immigrant. A Guéré in Pohan-Badouebly described his situation, which was representative of many others: When I came back from Liberia [in late 2011], a youth Guéré from Blédi [the next village] had sold more than 10 hectares of my family’s land. Everything is taken—the 1 ½ hectares where we’d planted cocoa, and land that used to 88 Human Rights Watch interview with village chief, western Côte d’Ivoire, February 11, 2013. 89 Human Rights Watch interview with village chief, western Côte d’Ivoire, February 12, 2013. 90 Human Rights Watch interview with Burkinabé community leader, Guiglo, June 1, 2013. 91 Human Rights Watch interview with community leader on the Duékoué land committee, Duékoué, February 4, 2013. 33 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013