Non-Violence in Ivory Coast

Non-Violence in Ivory Coast

As I watch the videos on Martin Luther King JR. and how he promotes non –violence as a way of communicating. I see from personal experience that in my own country Ivory Coast, they have not used it wisely. Martin Luther King emphasizes on using non-violence to convey a message. In Ivory Coast they have not used it several times, first in 2000 and just recently in 2010.

In 2004 when the Ivorian Air Force was destroyed by French military, the “young patriots” went out and attacked anything they knew was French based. They went after all the French schools. They destroyed the libraries, and chased French citizens out of the country. After the 2000 election the “young patriots” did not like the results that was proclaimed and took to the streets and killed “self-proclaimed” president General

Guei from Abidjan. (majority of Ivorians say that Gbagbo did it, because in a video we can see Gbagbo’s ministers taking Guei’s body) Same as in 2010 not only was it the ‘young patriots’ but also supporters of Mr. Allasane took to the street and protested but ended up burning tires, destroying public services. In 2010 the political parties provoced each other creating hatred amongst the supporters.

What happened with the Force Nouvelle was that they were tired of what the president Laurent Gbagbo did. For them he was not the right person to be the president of Ivory Coast, because in Ivory coast people bring ethnic groups in politic so people from the north mostly (dioulas, senifos) were a minority in the whole society, they were baldy threated. That why they started a rebellion. You can see that in every rebellion people who make it are tired of the government’s behavior. A quotes say “if you knock at the door and no one answer, break the windows and enter” (from BOOBA). This quote means if people doesn’t help you, try to help yourself. Plus I think that a rebellion cannot work without violence. In every lie there is a truth so I think they had a good reason for that.  But they bad part of that rebellion is that they started killing other people that are not dioulas, or senifo, and that became genocide. For me, I think that they had to go straight to their goal.

The country has suffered greatly due to all these political unrest, I feel the citizens could have used non-violent protestations around the country to express their views. Especially in Abidjan they have different meeting places they could have gone to. They could have organized sit –ins in front of the Embassies to express their opinions.

The videos on Martin Luther express non-violence as a great way of communicating and we can tell it made a great impact on the Americans. They were able

to make certain changes due to it. I feel that Ivory Coast could have used non-violence at many times but they missed that opportunity . I hope that my country evolves and realizes the importance of non-violence demonstrations.

Sources :

http://www.rezoivoire.net/picture/_manif1.jpg

French rapper: Booba “ if you knock at a door…..”

Mr. Kone – Interview January 27th 2010