combatants at the time of the attacks.77 The massacre of gendarmes in Bouaké is the worst such incident to come to light, but there may well have been others. In Bouaké, over fifty detained gendarmes and members of their families were systematically executed in early October by the MPCI forces.78 According to Amnesty International’s report on the massacre, the killings were apparently in reprisal for government attacks on northerners, and during the events there were several references made to the Youpougon massacre of October 2000.79 Human Rights Watch was told that initially “[o]nly the police and gendarmes were chased because it was they who harassed the northerners and foreigners with bribes and extortion prior to the war and in Abidjan. Therefore the rebels retaliated against them….The rebels announced in all the towns with megaphones that no one should help the police and gendarmes to leave.” 80 Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases of abuses against government officials and supporters in various northern and western towns controlled by the MPCI prior to November and by all three rebel groups after November 2003. Based on this research, it is does not appear that these attacks were part of a deliberate policy of ethnic targeting, however, further investigation is necessary to establish this beyond a doubt. Generally, targeting appeared to have been based on function rather than on ethnicity, and in some cases appears to have been based on the individuals’ behavior in their functions prior to the war. For instance, in at least two cases the rebels initially detained but later released government officials unharmed after questioning local residents about whether the official had been “kind.”81 Targeting of FPI members Members of the rebel groups sometimes targeted people who had been politically active as members of the ruling FPI party. Many civilians in the north and west are RDR and UDPCI members and were openly sympathetic to the aims of the MPCI and the smaller groups. FPI members often fled the north and west, or hid among local communities when the rebels took control. The targeting of FPI members appears to have been partly linked to pre-existing political tension, as there had been considerable election-related violence between rival political parties prior to the war, and to suspicions that FPI members would support the government. An Ivorian Yacouba couple described their fears as members of the FPI, and the difficulties of disassociating political and ethnic affiliation in the charged environment. We are Yacouba and members of the FPI. We were active in the electoral campaign for Laurent Gbagbo. The people of my village, who are mostly Yacouba, asked us ‘Why do you support Gbagbo? He’s a Bété.’ They didn’t understand that one could be Yacouba and support Gbagbo. When General Guei died, the FPI supporters were accused of having killed him…. The youths came and destroyed the FPI office and our house….Most FPI members went to Man….We stayed a month, then returned to the village and stayed with friends….Then the war began in Bouaké. Then Danané, Sanguiné, Man, Biankouma. The rebels came to us around December 15. They were Yacouba, in civilian clothes and uniforms, with red bandanas on their heads. There were also [other ethnicities]…. They said they came to avenge the death of General Guei….They told the village chief not to mistreat the FPI people. Then they asked the head of the village to give them young men for recruitment. The village chief gave them, he had to. My name was on the list. The men left and I hid. That night, the rebels came in a truck. I heard them say to the village chief, ‘Where are the FPI youths, we’ve come to kill them.’ I left through the window. I saw the rebels threaten the youth leader with a gun, saying, ‘show us where the FPI are, or we will kill you.’82 77 All parties to the conflict, including the rebel groups, are obliged to respect the fundamental guarantees established by international humanitarian law. The obligation to respect the provisions of Common Article 3 and Protocol II apply as much to the rebel groups as to the government. See chapter X on Côte d’Ivoire’s legal obligations. 78 Amnesty International, “Côte d’Ivoire: Une Suite de Crimes Impunis,” February 27, 2003. 79 Ibid. 80 Human Rights Watch interview, Bobo-Dioulasso, February 9, 2003. 81 Human Rights Watch interviews, Abidjan, March 24, 2003 and Guinea, March 2003. 82 Interviewed in Guinea, January 1, 2003, on file with Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch 26 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)