both the National Police Academy and National Gendarme Academy. Victims and witnesses said the abuse was perpetrated by both cadets and officers. On December 4, 2000, gendarmes, or FPI supporters in front of gendarmes or police, raped from six to ten young women who had run into the ENS technical institute to flee the afternoon street battles between RDR supporters and security forces. Several young women were handed over to youths to rape after the gendarmes were “finished” with them, “inviting” the FPI youths to sexually abuse the young women. Six of these women were then transferred to the National Police Academy where they were all subjected to other serious forms of sexual abuse, torture, and humiliation. Most of these abuses were perpetrated in the presence of high-level officers within the Academy. Four women were taken to the National Gendarme Academy where they were all raped for two days. All women interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported being beaten, specifically on the buttocks and thighs, while one suffered a broken arm and another a broken finger. The ENS technical institute where many of the rapes occurred is located near a university dormitory. A student watching from her window described the scene and how gendarmes “invited” others to rape the young women during December 4, 2000:85 I saw six women totally nude in the courtyard. Three of them were being raped by the gendarmes and the other three were handed over to the FPI youths. The gendarme knew some of the students were watching; in fact some of us, the women students, screamed from the windows for them to stop. But they didn’t care. Before starting to rape, the gendarmes looked up at us watching from the windows and screamed things like, ‘Come and get it; a free woman, who has a condom? Come and look, free porno.’ I saw ten gendarmes rape these girls; and some even took their rifle, pieces of branches, and sand and put it into their privates. The three women were being guarded in one place in the compound by one gendarme. Then they called one woman, and all ten of them raped her. Then she’d move to a side and they’d bring the second one. Then these three were handed over to the FPI. I didn’t see what happened to them there. I think they were raped in another place. We stayed there and watched this going on for two hours. I even called the police to come and stop it but they said they couldn’t do anything. Later they put the girls in a truck and drove them away. It was so horrible I couldn’t sleep for three days. One of the three young women described by the student above was visibly traumatized as she recounted how she and two other women were gang-raped by some ten gendarmes and several militant FPI youths on the grounds of the ENS technical institute. The young woman, a seventeen-year-old RDR supporter, was later taken to the National Gendarme Academy where she was gang raped by several more gendarmes for two more days.86 There was a lot of shooting so we ran into the ENS to hide. The gendarmes fired a lot of teargas into the place and after we started coughing and sneezing, they came to know that we were there. As soon as they dragged us out they started beating us and then three of us were raped—myself, the caretaker’s wife, and a woman from Dabou. The gendarmes raped us right there in the courtyard on the grass and dirt. They told us to lie down and said, ‘and you say you want a Burkinabé president; just wait and see what we do to you.’ First one raped me and then when I tried to get up another would push me down and get on top of me. About ten gendarmes raped me. A few of them also made me take their penises in my mouth. When they were finished they called the youth from FPI and asked, ‘who wants to make love with them?’ and then several of them came and raped us as well. Maybe even ten of them. I don’t remember. It all became a blur. At one point one of the youths put sand in my sex. 85 86 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 6, 2001. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 8, 2001 Human Rights Watch 45 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)