A senior UN humanitarian official warned on Thursday of the risk of genocide in the Central African Republic without a massive scaling up in the international response to the crisis. “It has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere, in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. The elements are there, the seeds are there, for genocide. There’s no question about that,” John Ging, director of operations for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a news conference in Geneva.
The CAR’s new interim leader ordered the deployment of hundreds more troops in the capital Bangui on Monday with instructions to shoot troublemakers ‘at point blank range’ in a bid to end months of religious violence. Fighting, attacks on mosques and the looting of Muslim-owned shops have persisted in Bangui since the resignation of rebel leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia last Friday under intense international pressure. Djotodia seized power last March at the head of the Muslim Seleka rebel coalition, unleashing a wave of killings and looting targeting the majority Christian population which in turn sparked revenge attacks by ‘anti-balaka’ Christian militia.