Unreported World: Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Reporter: Seyi Rhodes
Director: Alex Notts
Written By Amy Piner
27/05/2010
I have just finished watching an episode of Channel 4’s documentary series Unreported World in which reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Alex Nott arrive in Abidjan, the largest city and commercial capital of Ivory Coast, West Africa. The team become aware that there are few journalists and it soon becomes apparent why. Patriots of Laurent Gbagbo’s nationalist regime have an obvious distaste for foreign journalists, jeering them and shouting insults. The only time they interact with Rhodes or Nott is to express their threats against those in support of elected Alassane Ouattara.
The soldiers under Gbagbo’s regime hand out fire-arms to the Young Patriots and at rallys held by their leader Charles Ble Gaude they are incited to sign up to their armed forces to fight the civilians who are loyal to Ouattara. The crowd is riled into a frenzy and there is a sense of impending violence. The team have been given bodyguards by Gaude after advising Rhodes ‘foreigners will be lynched without them’, unfortunately the bodyguards didn’t stick around so the team had to make their way through the crowds alone.
As the team travel through the city they are stopped at three checkpoints and searched by Young Patriots, then, on the fourth they were robbed as they had AK-47s pointed at their heads. They were then sent on their way. It is strange, in this nation civilians are influenced to use violence and weapons to gain what they want and to defend their beliefs.
Soon Ouattara’s forces begin to move in on the presidential palace where Gbagbo is understood to be hiding. The city’s silence is cut through with the echoing sounds of gun shots as the patriots fight back. The fighting continues for days, civilians put at further risk due to their need for food and basic supplies. They are forced to run straight into the front line to search for their basic needs with Gbagbo’s soldiers threatening them with guns.
As Rhodes and Nott wait patiently in their hotel room, lying close to the floor as they listen to the civil war happening right outside. Notts glimpses outside to give us a view of where the main fighting is taking place. The sky is filled with a red smoke from the UN and French troops who are attaking thr Gbagbo’s tanks and military offences.
During this time the team have to hide in a room with a group of journalists as Gbagbo soldiers search the hotel. They leave half an hour later, taking with them the French hotel manager, two foreign businessmen and the Ivorian security guard. They were never heard from again.
Gbagbo was captured on April 11th in an underground bunker in the city but Quattara forces, and Alassane Ouattara was invested head of state on May 21st declaring in a speech “This is a new era of peace for Ivory Coast and people should try not to retaliate.” Although this is a positive step, it is also questionable whether Ouattara is being both realistic and understanding of the plight his people have experienced at the hands of their previous leader. Quattara must not expect things to just change because the people gained their rightful leader, he must help build relationships between his people and remember what his people did for him. Because they do believe he can build a better future.
