COTE D'IVOIRE / YOUNG PATRIOTS

Members of the Young Patriots movement on Wednesday (18 March) organized a protest outside the headquarters of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) to call for Security Council sanctions against their leader Charles Blé Goudé to be lifted.

ONUCI spokesman Hamadoun Toure today briefed the press on the events.

SOUNDBITE (French) Hamadoun Toure, Spokesman, United Nations Operation in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI):
“Yesterday we met with a group of young people claiming to represent ‘Generation Ble Goude’ and asking for the sanctions to be lifted.”

Demonstrations by Young Patriots calling for an end to sanctions against Blé Goudé started earlier this week in San Pedro, 368 km from Abidjan, after the government-run newspaper Fraternité Matin published a letter from the Committee of Experts of the UN Sanctions Committee asking the newspaper to suspend the payment of royalties to Charles Blé Goudé, in accordance with the sanctions. The paper had edited a book by Blé Goudé.

SOUNDBITE (French) Hamadoun Toure, Spokesman, United Nations Operation in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI):
“We have explained to this group the procedures to be followed for sanctions to be lifted.”

The group of protestors met with the Principal Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Côte d’Ivoire, Abou Moussa, who told them their request would be handed over to the appropriate authorities.

The leader of the Young Patriots delegation said they had taken note of ONUCI’s role as a transmission channel in the matter, and said they were prepared to follow ONUCI’s recommendation and even ask for its guidance if they needed to.

SOUNDBITE (French) Abou Bamba, “President of Ble Goude Generation”, leader of demonstrators’ delegation:
“We will tell people outside and inside the country that we have met with ONUCI leadership, whom we have handed over our letter. It will be transmitted to New York.”

The group also reaffirmed its commitment to peace, which it said was now irreversible. They promised that they would not resort to violence with regard to the case and would not attack UN premises in Cote d’Ivoire.

In February 2006 the UN Sanctions Committee imposed personal sanctions on Charles Blé Goudé for making public statements advocating violence against United Nations installations and personnel, directing and participating in acts of violence by street militias including beatings, rapes and extra-judicial killings, and obstructing the peace process in Cote d’Ivoire.

The Young Patriots, whose full name is the Congres Panafricain des Jeunes Patriotes (COJEP), is a strongly nationalist youth movement set up by Blé Goudé in 2001 that supports Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.