naked in front of a group of officers who then inserted sand and police truncheons into their vaginas, and forced them to pretend to have sex with each other. Several were beaten in their genital area with truncheons and one was directly threatened with rape. One of these women was in the early stages of pregnancy, and had a miscarriage during her days in detention. On December 4, a twenty-seven-year-old woman on her way home from work sought refuge within the teaching institute along with many RDR marchers. When police, accompanied by FPI youths discovered she was from the northern Senoufou ethnic group, she was beaten, stripped and raped by one of the youths. She was then taken to the National Police Academy where she suffered others forms of sexual abuse including an attempted rape. She recounted:88 We were six women in the Academy. I wasn’t raped inside but we suffered so many other terrible things. On the first night a police cadet told me to get up and follow him to the bath and toilet area. When I arrived he told me to clean myself well because he and the others were going to have sex with me. I told him that others had already done this to me and that I was burning inside, but he just said ‘you do it every day in town but here you refuse us.’ Then he asked, ‘the one who fucked you was he protected,’ to which I said no but by this time he’d already taken down his trousers and had an erection. But when I told him this he left me. But on the way back to the main room the policeman took me by where the officers sit. I knew they were officers because they had orange bars and were the ones we saw giving the orders. There were about seven or eight of them. When we reached them, one told me to lie down in front of them and open my legs. Then they came and looked at me, told me to open my legs wider and then ordered me to move like I’m making love with my husband. Then one of them put a handful of sand inside my vagina. It burned inside me. Then they told me get up and wash. They had me lying in front of them for about fifteen minutes. Then the next night, a police cadet told me to go take water in a bucket. While I was leaning over to fill the bucket, he tried to put his baton inside of me but I yelled out and in the end he wasn’t able to do it. Then this cadet told me, ‘the bosses wanted to talk to you.’ And they took me to the same place as the day before. I believe most of the officers were the same but I can’t be sure. Again they told me to lie down but this time they put the baton inside me saying, ‘just pretend this is your husband.’ I cried from the pain. Targeting of RDR Leaders In December, scores of RDR militants, including several mid- and high-level RDR leaders, were arrested, charged before an examining judge and later imprisoned within the Abidjan House of Arrest and Corrections (Maison d’Arrêt et de Correction de Abidjan, MACA), on charges of disrupting public order, breach of the peace, complicity in the destruction of property, or being in possession of a weapon. Very few of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported having been formally interrogated or even questioned about their activities. None, at this writing, had received a proper trial. The prolonged detention differed from October when almost all detainees were released from detention within one week. At this writing some forty remain in detention. Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou said the RDR leaders and activists had been arrested in possession of firearms and other weapons, and maintained that, “All these elements lay bare the manifest desire of the RDR to take power through arms.”89 Among those charged were Ali Coulibaly, RDR spokesman, Kafana Kone, RDR national secretary, and JeanPhilippe Kabore, the son of RDR general secretary Henriette Diabaty. 88 89 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 8, 2001. “Ivory Coast’s President Tries to Restore Calm,” www.cnn.com, December 5, 2000. Human Rights Watch 47 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)