“They looked at his identity card and shot him dead” Six months of post-electoral violence in Côte d’Ivoire 33 BOX 4. INTER-COMMUNAL VIOLENCE, INCLUDING RAPE, IN THE WEST DURING JANUARY 2011 In January 2011, in Duékoué (about 500 km to the west of Abidjan), some 40 people were killed in fierce intercommunal clashes. Hundreds of homes were looted and burned to the ground and thousands of people fled to camps for displaced people in the west of the country. This inter-communal violence between so-called autochthonous and non indigenous communities (“autochtones” and “allogènes”) took place while the town was still under the control of forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo which were unable to prevent and end these clashes. The inter-ethnic character of these clashes has been confirmed by the fact that almost everyone interviewed by Amnesty International in Duékoué described their attackers with ethnic labels - the Dioulas or Malinkés (considered to be Alassane Ouattara's supporters) or Guérés (considered to be Laurent Gbagbo supporters). These clashes took place in several areas of the town. Neighbourhoods inhabited predominantly by one community were burned down by the other. In mixed neighbourhoods, homes were targeted on the basis of ethnicity and presumed political affiliation. Most of the victims were members of the Guéré community, but members of the Dioula community were also attacked. A witness told Amnesty International how the Dioulas were killed in an area called Quartier Résidentiel: "Those who came to attack our neighbourhood on Monday [3 January 2011], I know them personally. This saved my life. I begged them to spare my house and they did. But they burned all the other houses of people who were not Guéré. They killed a neighbour, a Guinean; he was visiting his Malian friends here. When they arrived, he hid behind the door and they caught him and killed him. They cut off his hand and penis and put his penis at the end of their rifle." In February 2011, the Amnesty International delegation met several Guéré women who had been gang-raped in their own houses, which were then set ablaze. One victim told Amnesty International: "On Tuesday, 4 January, in the afternoon there was shooting and we hid in the house; there were many of us as other neighbours (f) had come to shelter in our house, in my father’s house. They broke the door and came in and started to hit the young men and boys and to rape the women. They were Dioula, were dressed in boubous and with amulets. Several women were raped in the house; they pushed some of the young men and boys outside and hit pregnant women. I was raped by 3 men; they told us to lay flat and said: ‘We’ll kill you.’ We fled the same night…. We went to the Catholic Mission in town but there was no space and now we are staying with my sister in the Quartier Carrefour ; she lent us a very small room by her house." During their visit to Duékoué in February 2011, the Amnesty International delegates accompanied this woman to her charred house located in the Toguéï neighbourhood. There was nothing left other than a pile of rubble from burned houses and the only people found there were non-Guéré. Index: AFR 31/002/2011 Amnesty International May 2011