CAR being emptied of Muslim population, UN warns
Date 2014/3/11 17:10:47 | Topic: Central African Republic
| A senior UN official has warned that violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) has forced almost all of the country's Muslims to flee.
Adama Dieng, the UN advisor on the prevention of genocide, said on Monday that the country is "being emptied of its Muslim population," AFP reported.
"Unless those who are perpetrating these serious crimes are made to account for those crimes, it is unlikely that we will not reach... genocide," he said.
Dieng was among the first to warn late last year of the escalating sectarian violence in the African country, saying the country was at risk of genocide.
"People are fleeing because they know that they are being targeted on the grounds of their religion," he said.
On March 6, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said most of the Muslims were driven out of the CAR’s western half.
"Since early December we have effectively witnessed a 'cleansing' of the majority of the Muslim population in western CAR," Guterres told a meeting of the UN Security Council on the ongoing crisis in the impoverished African country.
So far, thousands of people are believed to have been killed and more than one million displaced.
Some 2,000 French troops, supported by a 6,000-strong African Union force known as MISCA, are currently deployed to the CAR.
Dieng noted that the foreign forces have so far failed to curb the violence.
"Despite the presence of these troops... we are still now extremely worried," Dieng said, stressing the need to protect the remaining Muslims.
The Central African Republic has been facing deadly unrest since December 2013, when Christian armed groups launched coordinated attacks against the mostly Muslim Seleka group that toppled the government in March 2013.
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