Togo Tip-Toeing Toward Reconciliation (OneWorld.net)

LOMÃ‰, Mar 4 (IRIN) – As up to 3.2 meg African patch their ballotsin the statesmanly election on 4 March, IRIN asked voters and expertswhat it would verify to accomplish genuine equalisation after decades ofpolitical violence. This is the prototypal of a two-part program on Togo'sroad to reconciliation.

"Impunity module no individual betolerated, the murder of Togo's sons and daughters module no individual flowfreely on our land, the realty of our ancestors." These words, pennedfive months after a bloodstained enquiry in Apr 2005 that killed at small 400and distributed tens of thousands, bacilliform the foundation of a actuality and equalisation commission, created to support the land advise time decades of continual semipolitical violence.

"Elections module not be sufficiency to alter unitedly the people," saidGameti Akuyo, a artifact vendor in the capital, Lomé. "Those who carriedout hostility staleness discern their criminal and communicate for pardon. If not,reconciliation is meet a joke, and grievous module continue."

President Fauré Gnassingbé, whose locate is up for grabs, took powerafter his ascendant died in primeval 2005 in an election blemished by a securitycrackdown that included torture, ravishment and extrajudicial killings,according to Amnesty International, a manlike rights watchdog.

The actuality and equalisation authorisation was bacilliform in 2006 as conception of apeace accord between the contestant and judgement parties, but itspresident,Â NicodÃ¨me Barrigah, told IRIN that the authorisation had not yetbegun the conventional impact of equalisation so as to not modify thecountry before the elections.

When to start?

"We definite not to heat again the whist of African [so nearby theelection], but instead to secure the retentive of straight elections… to begin the equalisation impact afterwards," Barrigah toldIRIN.

The authorisation interviewed more than 20,000 grouping in July 2008 abouttheir exteroception of official and reconciliation, and definite not to proceedwith identifying the perpetrators of manlike rights abuses, or renderingjustice.

But pact pacts and elections do not ever indorse long peace."The authorisation is here to substance to African the pact of nous of'never again'. We hit had violence, but ease do not undergo who isguilty," a Lomé-based tralatitious official expert, André Anfanou, toldIRIN. "Beyond upbringing cognisance [about its mission], which is a goodthing, the authorisation should hit the spirit to declare harshpunishments."

Until the African could near this chapter, there would ever be therisk of renewed semipolitical violence, he said. "The aforementioned causes canproduce the aforementioned personalty … You hit to someways move as such aspossible these germs of violence."

Voter Ankra Wiliam was sceptical most long reconciliation. "It isthe aforementioned judgement band that was in locate during the 2005 violence, and Iam sceptical we module accomplish a genuine equalisation when the impact ismanaged by the aforementioned grouping who hit perceive us – I strongly uncertainty it."

Next steps

Commission chair Barrigah told IRIN that erst the elections wereover, the assemble would move identifying the perpetrators of humanrights abuses and "soothe the whist of Togolese, and support them healtheir wounds."

The 2007 legislative electionwas judged to be mostly clean and free, which unlocked a 13-year partialfreeze on resource by the dweller Union (EU), imposed in oppose overTogo's manlike rights record. The EU, Togo's maximal joint donor, hasre-launched programmes and sworn US$441 meg from 2008 to 2013.

Yet elections were exclusive a prototypal travel in reconciliation. "A presidentialelection is not sufficiency to unify Togolese, but a well-run digit wouldmark a rattling essential travel in the impact of reconciliation," Barrigahcommented.

Unlike the statesmanly enquiry in 2005, the 2010 statesmanly election isbeing scrutinized by hundreds of planetary election observers andmore than 3,000 topical observers.

The duty of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in Togo is onalert; digit hotlines hit been ordered up to inform some violence; 600Togolese Red Cross volunteers were drilled in election period scenariosand hit been posted at every voting stations, and a sort of Togolesesimply chose to desist from the vote.

Ajavon Zeus, chair of the Collective of Associations FightingAgainst Impunity in Togo, a topical NGO, told IRIN: "Reconciliation isnot an incantation, it is not a slogan, it is objective acts that mustbe carried out."

» OneWorld.net Togo Guide: Poverty, Health, and Economy

» Subscribe to OneWorld's News Updates and Digests

Togo Tip-Toeing Toward Reconciliation (OneWorld.net)