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Central African Republic

CAR is being robbed of its future

By Central African Republic, Mail & Guardian No Comments

NEWS ANALYSIS It seems as if everybody has a plan to save the Central African Republic but it is hard to figure out where the locals fit in. There seems to be a two-track policy when it comes to dealing with the crisis ai??i?? the international community follows one route while the CAR government waits for permission to act. The political process seems to be going nowhere. A transitional government under interim President Catherine Samba-Panza has been in office since February ai??i?? but saying it has been in power since then would be an overstatement. The president seems to spend…

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Disarmed to the teeth in Bangui

By Bangui, Central African Republic, Mail & Guardian No Comments

Thereai??i??s election fever in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR). It seems as if everybody is declaring themselves a candidate for president. Itai??i??s almost hard to believe anyone would want the job. But if precedent is anything to go by, itai??i??s a licence to loot. The popularity of the current interim administration is to the left of zero. An SMS made the rounds in Bangui earlier this week calling for a general strike if the few remaining Muslims in the city had not been disarmed by Thursday. The CARai??i??s interim president, Catherine Samba-Panza, has few of the…

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Central African Republic descends unchecked into hell

By Central African Republic, Mail & Guardian No Comments

That’s how medical charity MAi??decins Sans FrontiA?res (MSF) describes the country that briefly dominated news in South Africa earlier this year. The CAR barely qualifies as a country. The descent into hell for many of the 4.5-million people living there is going almost unnoticed. The CAR already has the second lowest life expectancy in the world ai??i?? 48 years. For years its infant mortality rate has been three times higher than the level used to define a humanitarian crisis. New figures present an even grimmer picture. This week, a group of five nonAi??governmental organisations still operating there held a press…

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CAR: Bozizé, Zuma in backroom troops deal

By Central African Republic, Mail & Guardian, South Africa No Comments

Central African Republic’s outsted president Francois Bozizé’s request for South African troops in Bangui did not go through proper channels. The government of the Central African Republic did not make a formal request to South Africa to send troops there. Ousted president Francois Bozizé made the request directly to President Jacob Zuma, without going through his own country’s national assembly. The doyen of constitutional lawyers in the CAR, MaAi??tre Zarambaud Assingambi, told the Mail & Guardian that there is nothing wrong with the president signing a defence agreement, but any such agreement must be ratified by the national assembly, and…

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CAR’s criminal soldiers ‘out of control’

By Central African Republic, Mail & Guardian No Comments

http://floordesign.no/business-plan/ “Out of control elements” is how locals are referring to those responsible for the acts of violence that are keeping people off the CAR’s streets. But there is absolutely no doubt who these elements are ai??i?? they are Seleka soldiers who self-proclaimed president Michel Djotodia has not managed to stop from raping, looting, pillaging and killing. On Wednesday morning two district chiefs arrived at local independent radio station Ndeke Luka to announce that two police officers had been stripped naked and beaten on a busy street while Seleka rebels shared the stolen uniforms amongst themselves. A few hours earlier…

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