after Bozoum, news from Bangassou: A little worrisome ...

gli orfani dell'Arc en Ciel
les orphelins du Centre Arc en Ciel

A little worrisome ...

Many of you are already aware ... It has been a pretty hectic week. Saturday, April 27th I returned to the river, because I wanted to see the situation in the Ouham, and the Chinese companies that extract gold from it.

Saturday morning, 27 of April, I wanted to look at the situation about the Ouham river, and the Chinese mining companies present to extract gold.

I take some photos and some video of the works that have practically continued.

When I start my way back to the mission, a soldier comes toward me and orders me to stop. He is armed, and I do not really trust him, so I tell him I just want to continue on my way. He then calls by radio other soldiers, who arrive immediately.

They ask me why I had come to take photos… and I tell them that it is not forbidden, even less so because I was not even at the work area but on the other side of what was the Ouham river. They are very upset, and they threaten me, they yell and pull away my camera and my phone, then pat me down and search my pockets.

They walk with me to the place where I left my car, and there they tell me I am arrested! One of them asks me whether I am not ashamed, as a man of God, to be doing “that kind of thing”. I reply that I am rather ashamed of him, who is supposed to protect the country, and not to sell it to foreigners…

Since I insist that I was not on the works area, they want me to show them where I was when I took the photos. We start walking again, under the sun at full force, and we do for the third time the 1.5 km. Afterwards we go back to my car, of which they had already taken the keys, they make me climb in the back seat and depart at high speed toward the “Brigade Minière” (donation of the Chinese!!!). But we have to go across the city of Bozoum and the people looking on understand immediately that there is a problem.

When we arrive to the Brigade Minière, a large group of young people, women and other people arrive, yelling and demanding that I am liberated. The situation is almost comical: the soldiers do not know what to do, and there I am waiting… After a few minutes, they decide to let me go, but I demand to have my camera and my phone back.

Finally, I come out of the Brigade Minière. The large group celebrates loudly and I leave by motorcycle (the car keys had not yet arrived back). The entire population of the city are in the streets, happy that I have been freed, but also very angry toward the authorities, and above all against the Chinese mining company.

I go back home, but in the meantime the city is really in upheaval: the people set up road blocks, and a car of the Chinese company is set on fire.

The crowd intends to go toward the mining works, to chase the Chinese away. Then I return to the city with the Prefect and the Public Prosecutor, and we try to calm down the people. But exactly at the same time a vehicle of the FACA (armed forces of Central Africa), arrives at high speed with about ten soldiers. They are armed, but the crowd (already between 3000 and 4000 people) moves toward them and forces them to back away. When they are close to the vehicle, the soldiers start shooting toward the people at point-blank range: we all throw ourselves to the ground, and thanks to the Lord there are no casualties!

Finally, they leave. I bring back the crowd to the center of the city, I climb on one of the road blocks and thank them, but I tell them to please go back to their homes, and do not commit more violent acts. I also say that the problem of the salvage exploitation of the river has to be solved according to the law.

And they leave!

Merci na Nzapa. Thanks be to God!

The following days have been very intense. The Bangui authorities accused me of being a gold dealer!

Finally, for once, they let me publish some of the photos of the occurrences happening here. With the help of God (and of many people): here are the images, my gold!