SUMMARY

Faced with armed separatist rebels in Casamance, the southern-most region in Senegal, the Government of Senegal carried out one-sided violence against the population in the area affected by the conflict (see Senegal: Casamance.

Analysts have concluded that an important reason for the practice of targeting the civilian population was that as the government’s armed forces proved unable to defeat the rebel group MFDC by military means, it consciously chose to terrorize civilians to force them to take sides or at least dissuade them from supporting the rebels. The one-sided killings were but one component of these human rights violations. The region also saw the arrest of hundreds of civilians, many of whom were tortured. Furthermore, more than one hundred persons “disappeared”, in the meaning that they were arrested by the Senegalese security forces, but did not appear on any lists of detainees and have not been seen since.

For all of these human rights violations, including the one-sided violence, a common denominator was that the targeted people to a large extent were members of the Diola ethnic group, and for that reason alone considered to be rebels, or at least rebel sympathizers. Thus, there was a distinct ethnic dimension to the violence.

Senegalese civilians were killed in varying circumstances. There were several cases of people who died as a result of the torture inflicted by soldiers at the time of arrest or in the hours following arrest. Others were simply victims of extrajudicial executions. Yet others were killed at roadblocks, following identity checks. Failing to provide the correct identity papers, people were at times by default considered rebels and subsequently killed.

While anonymous statements from government soldiers hold that it was regular practice for Senegalese security forces to torture and execute civilians in Casamance, the Government of Senegal has never publicly acknowledged these atrocities. However, Amnesty International reports that when pressed the official line has been that “any excesses - if, indeed, there are any - are because of the war and should be forgotten.”

The Government of Senegal first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1998, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached on 2 November that year, when over 30 people were killed in the village of Djifanghor in the largest massacre of civilians by the army since the beginning of the intrastate armed conflict.