to stop it and said, ‘but these could be your sister or your mother’; but another just said, “our mothers and women are at home, not out in the street.” Then one of the gendarmes picked on a particular woman and grabbed her breasts and started pulling her in circles around the room. Then they’d just point at one of us and order us to stand. Then they inspected our private parts. They said they were looking for the biggest ones to rape the women. Then they told five boys to get an erection and rape the women. But they couldn’t and then the gendarmes walked up to those men, took their penis in the palm of their hand and hit it, hard, with the buckle of their belts. They screamed from the pain and they were bleeding. They hit all five men like this. Victimization on the Basis of Ethnicity and Religion From October 26, 2000, the violence also developed a clear ethnic and religious focus. The victims were not only supporters of Alassane Ouattara’s RDR party, but also foreigners, Muslims, and Ivorians from northern ethnic groups who were identified with the RDR but targeted explicitly on the basis of their ethnic group, religion, and/or foreign nationality. Scores of victims from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, or Dioula from northern Côte d’Ivoire, described being dragged out of their homes, pulled off of buses, stopped randomly in the street, or chased by groups of gendarmes or police. Numerous witnesses described members of non-northern ethnic groups being allowed to proceed at checkpoints and freed from detention after verifying their place of origin. Witnesses and victims said well over one hundred foreigners were among those being held within the National Police Academy. An elderly Muslim man who witnessed thirteen foreigners, RDR supporters, and Dioulas being gunned down by gendarmes on October 26, 2000, was among many who described how Ivorians from other ethnic groups were let go:35 While we were lying there being beaten, a group of four people came by; two men and two women. I saw the gendarme stop them and ask them for their ID papers. After looking, the gendarme said, ‘you can go, it’s not Baoules we want, it is the Dioula we’re looking for.’ The comments made by both state security forces and FPI while capturing, taunting and torturing, or indeed before killing their victims illuminated the depth to which ethnic hatred and xenophobia had taken root. On October 26, 2000, Muslims and mosques also came under joint attack by FPI militants and police. In several cases Muslims were accused of harboring arms in the mosques but police made no effort to establish whether or not this was true. Instead, Muslims were “accused” of supporting the RDR supporters and subsequently punished. In detention, Muslims were often insulted and forced to break religious rules. In Yopougon, after several hundred FPI supporters surrounded and threatened to burn down the Aicha Niangon-Sud mosque, the frightened mosque officials telephoned the police for help. Police from two districts responded, but instead of dispersing the mob, they allowed the mob to enter and proceeded to detain the Muslims trying to protect their mosque. Some thirty Muslims were then taken into custody, and held and tortured in the National Police Academy for several days. One of the congregation described what happened:36 At around 9:30 a.m., I received a call from the imam telling me to be careful because mobs had already burned down another mosque in Yopougon. At first we thought it was a rumor, but to be sure we did a call to prayer, to get members of our Mosque to come and help protect it. After they came, we saw a huge group of people―a few hundred—coming towards the mosque. When they arrived they surrounded us and started knocking at the gate and throwing rocks inside the compound. 35 36 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 19, 2000. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 15, 2000. Human Rights Watch 21 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)