OIC Sends Fact-Finding Mission to CAR as Muslims Evacuated from Capitol

The world's largest bloc of Islamic countries is sending 14 delegates to the Central African Republic on Tuesday to lead a fact-finding mission, express solidarity with Muslims and to contribute to peace talks in the wake of a near-total Muslim evacuation from the country's capitol. 

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation says delegates will be in the capital, Bangui, for three days. Guinea's Foreign Minister Lounceny Fall will head the delegation, which will include other foreign ministers from the 57 member-states, as well as OIC Secretary-General Iyad Ameen Madani and the body's special envoy to the Central African Republic, Sheikh Tidiane Gadio 

Central African Republic exploded into violence late last year. International forces have struggled to contain the fighting that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslims in what the United Nations' human rights body has called "ethnic-religious cleansing." 

The delegation is being sent in the wake of a near total Muslim evacuation of Bangui. 

Foreign peacekeeping troops escorted about 1300 Muslims out of Bangui, triggering looting and removing one of the last pockets of Muslims from the capital of a nation torn apart by religious violence. 

The foreign peacekeepers escorted thousands of Muslims to relative safety in the north of the Central African Republic. But some leaders fear that will make permanent divisions that have led to talk of partition after 18 months of conflict. 

Peacekeepers stood by as Christians, some armed with machetes and bows and arrows, swarmed into and picked apart houses in Bangui's northern PK12 neighbourhood on Sunday, which had been a Muslim stronghold in the majority Christian south. 

"We are leaving to save our lives," Mohamed Ali Mohamed, who was born and brought up in the area, said, as fellow Muslims tied jerry cans to trucks ahead of the trip. 

Some of the departing Muslims torched their cars as they could not take them in the convoy but did not want others to be able to use them once they had left. 

After watching their former neighbours leave from behind a thin white rope barrier put up by Congolese peacekeepers, hundreds of Christians, including women and children, took part in the looting. Many chanted "Liberation, Liberation!" 

Within minutes of the convoy’s departure, an angry swarm of neighbors descended upon the local mosque in a scene of total anarchy. Tools in hand, they swiftly dismantled and stole the loudspeaker once used for the call to prayer and soon stripped the house of worship of even its ceiling fan blades. 

Central African Republic's Minister for Reconciliation last week criticised the evacuations, warning they would play into the hands of Muslim rebels who want to create an independent state in the north. 

Auguste Boukanga, president of the URD party which remained neutral in the conflict, echoed these concerns, calling on the 2000 French and more than 5000 African peacekeepers to instead stick to their mandate of disarming the gunmen spreading terror. 

Giuseppe Loprete, head of the local office of the International Organisation for Migration, the UN agency involved in the evacuation, said Muslims living near the central mosque and in PK5, another Bangui neighbourhood, did not want to leave. 

"We are working on social cohesion ... I'm not sure that they want to leave. Actually they told us they prefer to stay in Bangui," he said. 

Sources: en.islamtoday.net (Apr. 28, 2014)