Ivory Coast should punish wartime rapists -report

ABIDJAN, Aug 2 (Reuters) Ivory Coast must bring to justice soldiers and rebels who raped women and girls during its 2002-2003 civil war to end impunity that has fostered more sexual violence, Human Rights Watch said today.

A report by the rights campaigners entitled ''My Heart is Cut'' details the horrifying ordeals of victims raped and often beaten in their homes, at road blocks or while fleeing into the bush from fighting that divided the West African state in two.

''Combatants raped women old enough to be their grandmothers, children as young as six, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers. Sometimes family members were forced to watch or were forced to rape their own relatives,'' the report said of the war.

Though most sexual violence took place while fighting was ongoing, the report says abuses have since continued unpunished, usually becoming more frequent during periods of political tension and rioting that have characterised the post-war years.

HRW says the government has made few efforts to pursue the perpetrators to deter these crimes and calls on the state to allow the International Criminal Court to investigate serious rights abuses and for both sides to acknowledge they happened.

''This failure has created a context conducive to increasingly entrenched lawlessness, one in which impunity prevails and violence against women and girls remains a serious problem,'' the report said.

SEX SLAVES The report says some of the worst sexual violence of the war took place in the country's volatile west, often committed by Liberian mercenaries fighting for both sides. Many women and girls were abducted to become sex slaves for the rebels.

HRW said the government failed to give adequate support to victims, many of whom still bear physical and psychological wounds.

It said local and international charities had sometimes been threatened or attacked, hampering their work.

Some women were left infertile after being violently and repeatedly raped, the report said, and a number had died shortly after being violated, probably from bleeding or beatings.

''They'd rape me three or four in the night, they would put their guns next to you and if you refuse they kill you. They killed one of my friends and made us bury her. We were about 10 or 15 girls there, being raped,'' said one girl kept as a sex slave in a rebel camp.

Rebel and government forces often chose victims from ethnic groups seen as sympathetic to the opposing side, the report said. Family members of government troops or police unable to flee the north before rebels seized it, were also targeted.

The war shattered the former French colony's image as a haven of peace and economic power house in turbulent West Africa but a long stalemate between the factions ended in March when they agreed to work towards disarmament and elections.

President Laurent Gbagbo made his first visit on Monday to the rebel-held north since the war, declaring the conflict over at a ceremony in the rebel stronghold town Bouake and calling for long-delayed elections to be organised as soon as possible.

Bouake-based United Nations peacekeepers from the 11,000 Blue Helmets and French soldiers deployed to keep rebel and government forces apart, are under investigation for sexual abuse and exploitation of minors as young as 13.

The 734-strong contingent of Moroccan peacekeepers have been confined to their bases in the town pending investigation of the allegations by the world body which have tainted another African peacekeeping mission, following abuse in Liberia and the Congo.

REUTERS PD RN1636