were constantly patrolling the town in their four-by-four. They gave out war cries as they patrolled, such as ‘haut les coeurs’ in French. A military vehicle stopped at the request of the crowd, who told the military that they had captured two foreigners. Two military got down from the four-by-four and motioned for the crowd to get away from the two foreigners. The two men kept begging for their lives, saying ‘Forgive me, I’m not a rebel.’ The soldiers told the two men to run. When they started to run, the military shot them both in the back and in the back of their heads, which broke their heads and caused their brains to fly out in pieces. I was traumatized. I couldn’t sleep. I saw it again and again.188 The direct targeting of Burkinabé by government forces supported by civilian militias increased as the conflict’s ethnic dimension intensified in the west. The increasing manipulation of this ethnic conflict through government statements and press reports in the media focusing on the so-called genocide against the Wê (Gueré), only worsened the situation, inciting more violence. By early April 2003, any semblance of the rule of law was gone from certain government-controlled towns such as Duékoué, and the rule of civilian militias was at its peak. Mob violence in total impunity in Duékoué: March-April 2003 The collaboration of government forces and civilian militias created a climate of fear and total impunity in Duékoué in April 2003, when Human Rights Watch visited the town. Being accused of being an ‘assailant’ could be a death sentence not only for Burkinabé, but for any individual from an ethnic group viewed as allied to the rebels, and indeed, any hapless individual caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Local authorities completely abdicated their responsibility for maintaining law and order. Instead, they permitted mob violence and civilian militias to act with impunity, and state security forces made little or no attempt to control them, much less hold them accountable. Two incidents reported to Human Rights Watch by credible sources demonstrated this trend of mob violence completely tolerated by local authorities. In one case in early March, 2003: A Yacouba man went to the mayor’s office [in Duékoué] to request a laissez-passé. He was accused by someone in the crowd of being an ‘assailant.’ The crowd threw themselves on him and beat him with bricks, shoes and other items. After being taken, badly injured, to the local hospital, some of the members of the crowd came to the hospital, dragged him outside, killed him and burned his body, and left it in the courtyard. Finally the surgeon from the hospital requested that the body be buried because the nurses in the hospital were refusing to work there. 189 In another incident in early March, a young Gueré was beaten to death by a crowd twenty-five meters from a gendarmerie post after another Gueré man accused him of being an ‘assailant.’190 Reprisal killings of self-defense committee members In reaction to the increasingly active role in the conflict played by the Gueré self-defense committees, the rebel forces increasingly targeted Gueré self-defense committee members after capturing areas previously held by the government, particularly in and around Man and Bangolo. Human Rights Watch documented several cases where self-defense committee members were specifically targeted, probably in reprisal for their collaboration with government forces in abuses against Dioula and Burkinabé civilians. In one such case the rebel forces targeted local villagers in the Man vicinity. They came through Siabli towards 4 a.m. on the way to Man. The next morning we found the bodies of three villagers from Siabli. They had been tied up, including their hands, then tied to a vehicle with a 188 Human Rights Watch interview, Bobo-Dioulasso, February 8, 2003. 189 Human Rights Watch interview, Duékoué, April 4, 2003. 190 Human Rights Watch interview, Duékoué, April 4, 2003. Human Rights Watch 47 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)