Between 2:00-3:00 p.m. I was heading alone back home from work. I usually go back along the highway but because of the demonstrations I decided to walk through the residential neighborhood, ‘Village Ébrié.’ I came upon a barricade where they asked for my ID. At first they let me through but after walking a few meters one of them whistled and then thirty or so of them surrounded me. I heard someone say, ‘this man is a Malian.’ I even recognized three of them that I used to greet whenever I passed through here. They asked me for 1000 CFA [U.S.$1.40] I got out my money and gave them the 1000 but then they just grabbed all I had; about 45,000 CFA [$61.00] Then set upon me; they started beating me all over with machetes, sticks, rocks. They hit my leg several times with a machete and were beating my head. I was on the ground. I didn’t know what was happening. I was alone and yelled but they continued and continued. Then I must have passed out. I was later told I’d been thrown into a gutter and picked up and taken to a clinic by two men who knew me. One of the Ébrié youths from Anonkoua manning the barricades in October described how he believed they were acting in self-defense: There had been problems since October 24, and by October 26 we in the neighborhood ‘Village Ébrié’ decided to provide security for ourselves. On Thursday, October 26, at around 9:00 a.m. the RDR started marching from Anyama. I saw there were about 500 of them and they were armed with sticks, rocks, machetes…they were clamoring for new elections. When the march arrived at Anonkoua, they started burning tires and we were frightened. The RDR marchers asked us what party we stood for, and if we weren’t RDR we were attacked. Those people were like the Palestinians with their rocks. They attacked our people so then our people started running back to their houses. They got their shotguns and started shooting at the RDR. I saw one wounded RDR who had a bullet in his chest. After this, we, the Ébrié, formed a checkpoint and started controlling everyone going by, asking for their ID cards. If you had a name that was from the north, a Dioula name, then you were brutalized. I saw one man dressed in a Muslim robe who was being beaten and attacked with a hammer. Even the wounded were not immune from ethnic violence. A twenty-three-year-old youth, wounded by paramilitary gendarmes during clashes in Abobo on October 26, described from his hospital bed how he and his doctor were attacked by an FPI mob while on their way to hospital:59 I’d gone to buy bread when panic erupted. As I was hiding in an alley I saw a gendarme firing directly at me from about thirty meters away and I was hit. On our way to the hospital, near the university, we were stopped by a mob of FPI and university student youths with white headbands and Gbagbo T-shirts. They were armed with iron bars, knives, rocks, and sticks. The others explained that I was wounded and that we were on our way to the hospital but they said, ‘we don’t care, all we know is that you’re all Dioulas.’ They knew we were Dioulas, because at one point my friends were speaking in Dioula and they’d heard it. They dragged us out of the car and beat us; even me. Then they broke the windows of our car, and set it on fire with gas they had in containers. We begged them to let us go but they beat us, stole our watches and necklaces. The doctor took off running and then one of my friends put me over his shoulder and we ran away as well. During the October 26 demonstrations, FPI supporters, civil servants, and people from ethnic groups backing Laurent Gbagbo were attacked by angry RDR mobs primarily within the RDR strongholds of Anyama and 59 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 12, 2000. Human Rights Watch 34 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)