For three days we suffered all kinds of torture. The cadets would work on us in groups; each one doing whatever he felt like. After they tired or at the end of their shift another group would come and do whatever they wanted. They screamed at all of us to lie down on our stomach, then beat us with burning branches; keeping it there a few moments to make sure it burned. There was one who put the top of a saucepan in the fire till it was scalding then put a belt around the top so as to be able to hold it. Then he walked around burning us. They beat us with iron, wood, batons, and would then pour a liquid that burned terribly into the open wounds. I think this was tear gas mixed with water. While they did this they said things like, ‘you’re the Dioula; you already control transport and trade and construction, and now you want more, you want to be president.’ We didn’t eat or drink anything, not even water, on Monday or Tuesday. It wasn’t until Wednesday morning, after the Red Cross and human rights people came, that we got something to eat, that the torture stopped, and things got a lot better. Except on Thursday morning, after the beating had effectively stopped, a single gendarme came into the room and said sarcastically, ‘You people are really ok here. You should see how your comrades in the National Gendarme Academy are getting on. If you see them, you’ll see how well we treat RDR people.’ Then he took off his red belt, with that thick iron buckle, and started beating us. He went around like a mad man for thirty minutes until he’d broken into a sweat. The other police just stood by, laughing, not saying anything or trying to stop him. As in October, foreigners, northerners, and Muslims were dragged out of their homes or stopped on the street and detained solely and explicitly on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, or religion. According to a December report by the Interior Ministry, over half of the 302 detainees being held in the National Police Academy were foreigners (including fifty-seven Guineans, forty-six Malians, and twenty-eight Burkinabés).75 Victims and witnesses described police and gendarmes breaking into the houses of foreigners and threatening to kill them if they didn’t come out. A forty-year-old Malian house painter was dragged out of his neighborhood on December 4, with at least ten others, during a morning police round-up operation in Williamsville. While held in the National Police Academy he was severely tortured, resulting in at least thirty open gashes and five deep, open sores and burns on his back, several of which required stitches. He recounted:76 On the morning of December 4, we’d heard there was going to be trouble so I decided to stay home from work. At around 8:00 a.m., I went outside to the public washing area and starting hearing the people running around and then saw six or seven policemen. They ordered me out and I tried to explain that I wasn’t among the marchers, that I was a Malian and had nothing to do with politics. When I told them this they said, ‘Oh you’re a Malian…you’re the ones who send others to march in the streets while you remain at home.’ They asked for my ID but they didn’t even look at it. Then they dragged me and another Malian as they moved through the neighborhood, compound by compound, looking for foreigners and Ivorian Dioulas. They threw a few tear gas bombs into houses of people who didn’t want to open up. I didn’t count how many they pulled out of their houses but I think there were about ten to fifteen. 75 76 “Ivory Coast – Report of Violations Within the Police Academy,” Ministry of the Interior, December 2000. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 7, 2001. Human Rights Watch 39 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)