Central African President Faustin-Archange Touadéra violently attacked Westerners on Sunday March 5 in Doha, accusing them of “maintaining political instability” to plunder the country’s wealth and prevent its development. At a summit of the least developed countries (LDCs) under the aegis of the UN in Doha, the Head of State deemed his country “victim of geostrategic aims linked to its natural resources”.
“The Central African Republic has been subjected since its independence to systematic looting facilitated by the political instability maintained by certain Western countries” and “armed terrorist groups whose leaders are foreign mercenaries”, he denounced. “Recurrent attacks” by these groups aim to “make the country ungovernable, to prevent the state from exercising its right of sovereignty over natural reserves and its legitimate right to self-determination”.
After the departure of the bulk of French troops from the Central African Republic, Moscow dispatched “military instructors” there in 2018, then hundreds of paramilitaries in 2020 at the request of Bangui, faced with a threatening rebellion. The last French soldiers left the country in December 2022. The UN independent expert on the situation of human rights in the Central African Republic accused in February the army and its Russian allies of abuses against the population and elected officials.
“The Central African people are being held hostage”
The European Union then announced new sanctions against the Russian paramilitary group Wagner for its “human rights violations” in Africa, targeting several of its senior officials in the Central African Republic, including “the security adviser” of President Touadéra, a member of Wagner, and the group’s spokesperson in the country.
In Qatar, the President asked why his country, “endowed with an immense geological treasure – gold, diamonds, strategic raw materials including cobalt, uranium, oil – still unexploited (…), remains more sixty years after independence one of the poorest countries in the world”.
He also castigated “the unjust and illegitimate arms embargo on the Central African armed forces and on the Central African diamond” as well as “the disinformation and demonization campaigns of certain foreign media in order to discourage investors”.
“The Central African people are therefore taken hostage”, he hammered, judging the efforts of his government “compromised by the geostrategic aims to which it is totally foreign” and calling for the lifting of the suspension of donor aid (EU, IMF, World Bank) and the embargo on arms and diamonds.
