Shots fired at Gbagbo protesters (Ivory Coast)

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Opposition militants were threatening to remove President Laurent Gbagbo after his failure to step down.

His five-year mandate was supposed to end on Sunday. But scheduled elections have been postponed and the UN decided to keep him in power for another year. <snip>

Several thousand opposition supporters attended a rally in Abidjan to demand that President Gbagbo leave office.

Women wearing white face paint danced round in circles while young men loudly shouted their rage at Mr Gbagbo. <snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4389832.stm

[High Plains]

1. Nobody cares...

given all the action this post has receieved.

[Mojorabbit]

2. It is not that I don't care

I am just not familiar with what is going on in this area...

[yasmina27]

3. I lived in the Ivory Coast

About 15 years ago. Was there on a scholarship from the Rotary Foundation to study French for a year. It was a wonderful experience. At that time, it was called the "Paris of West Africa". I met alot of wonderful people and learned alot more than French!

It breaks my heart when I read stories about what is going on.

[senegal1]

4. I care and thank you for the post.

Its not so easy to get news on the Ivory Coast. I still have friends there. For those of you who don`t care but where kind enough to look at this post. The Ivory Coast once was the most stable country in Africa. The only country in Africa that had never experienced a Coup d`etat. That ended in Dec 2000 when a military dictator took over the country. A number of Coup d`Etat`s and interventions later and Gbagbo took over as the legit elected president. However his ambitions were to disenfranchise Northern non-christians and anyone not of his tribal background. This has lead to continuing civil war between the North and the South with a peacekeeping force mainly led by the French marginally effectively separating the two sides. In the process the once stable country has become a breeding ground for militant groups from Liberia and the effect of the lack of economy has forced villagers to deforest increasing areas of the Ivory Coast and Liberia -- some of these areas harbor some of the last of species of forest elephant, pygmy hippos, and some of the last wild Chimp habitat in Africa. In addition, to the human suffering and the degradation of the environment, the Ivory Coast was once the engine of West Africa. Ghana and Senegal come no where close to picking up the freight the IC once carried for the region. Thus the whole area of West Africa a rather fragile area to begin with is becoming more and more unstable economically and socially as each month passes. The result a narrowly avoided `Rwanda` situation in the past year and a half. Why should we care if Africa can`t get it together? -- I guess one could say the same of Katrina, or the recent Tsunami or any of a million other tragedies... perhaps because we are simply human...