Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in January, we detailed how WorldNetDaily threw its support to Laurent Gbagbo, the "Christian" leader of Ivory Coast who's fighting to stay in office despite international consensus that his Muslim opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won the election.
WND is standing by its man. A March 31 WND article, taken from WND editor Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, declares that Ivory Coast "is being plunged into civil war by rebel Muslims who want to get rid of a Christian president," going on to complain: "They are being supported by United Nations and U.S. efforts, even though the nation's own constitutional process affirmed Christian President Laurent Gbagbo's election victory."
In fact, the reason the U.S., the U.N., and even the European Union declared Ouatarra the winner is because there is a problem with the "constitutional process" WND touts. The constitutional council WND relies on as having certified the results of the election is, in fact, controlled by Gbagbo loyalists who reversed previous results declaring Ouattara the winner.
WND also conveniently ignores that Gbagbo's "Christian" regime has been accused of human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch states that "pro-Gbagbo forces are increasingly targeting immigrants from neighboring West African countries in their relentless attacks against real and perceived supporters of Alassane Ouattara." It continues:
Residents from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Niger gave detailed accounts of daily attacks by pro-Gbagbo security forces and armed militias, who beat foreign residents to death with bricks, clubs, and sticks, or doused them with gas and burned them alive. A Malian man interviewed by Human Rights Watch described how he and six other West Africans were forced into two vehicles by armed militiamen and taken into the basement of an abandoned building. More youths were waiting, who then executed five of the captured West Africans at point-blank range. The homes, stores, and mosques of hundreds of other West Africans have been burned, or they have been chased out of their neighborhoods en masse under threat of death at the hands of pro-Gbagbo militias.
The brunt of these attacks came immediately after Gbagbo's "youth minister," Charles Blé Goudé, called publicly on February 25 for "real" Ivoirians to set up roadblocks in their neighborhoods and "denounce" foreigners. The situation threatens to worsen further, as a March 7 letter addressed to the Burkina Faso ambassador by a militant pro-Gbagbo group warned. The letter threatened to "cut the umbilical cord" of the Burkina Faso nationals in Côte d'Ivoire unless they left the country by March 22.
Human Rights Watch also documented the recent enforced disappearances of at least seven active members of Ouattara's party, as well as the February 25 rape of nine politically active women - the day after fighting between armed forces loyal to Gbagbo and Ouattara broke out in the Abobo area of Abidjan. Pro-Gbagbo forces are using excessive force in response to largely peaceful demonstrations, resulting in at least 25 deaths since February 21 - including seven women killed on March 3 when security forces opened fire with a mounted machine gun and a larger unidentified weapon against thousands of women demonstrators.
The abuses by pro-Gbagbo forces against real and perceived Ouattara supporters have escalated since mid-February.
Human Rights Watch also notes that pro-Ouattara forces have engaged in abuses as well. But it states that, since Gbagbo still controls the state apparatus, "pro-Gbagbo forces engage in these frequent acts of deadly abuse, apparently with absolutely no fear of being investigated or held accountable."
WND also repeats the discredited lie that Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Kenya, was "appearing ... at campaign stops" with Raila Odinga, who was campaigning for president at the time, where "Obama gave speeches accusing the sitting Kenyan president of being corrupt and oppressive." As we've detailed, PolitiFact.com found "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga" during his 2006 trip to Kenya.
